Procurement office and HIL GmbH agree on the future course

Annette Lehnigk-Emden, President of the Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw), and representatives of the government-owned Army Maintenance Logistics company (HIL GmbH) signed a contract in Koblenz on 20 December 2023 to modernize and further develop the company.

In early November 2023, the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag had approved the performance contract governing “the future of HIL GmbH” worth EUR 13.4 billion.

More personnel, more qualification and more knowledge transfer

The purpose of the contract amendment is to further improve the maintenance services for Bundeswehr land systems. The future-oriented focus ensures greater flexibility and the acceleration of maintenance measures and contributes to increasing the materiel readiness of the armed forces. It serves to ensure national security provision and follows the security policy requirement of national and collective defense capabilities driving the planning process.

A significant increase in the share of in-house maintenance is central to this new focus. This is mainly to be achieved through increasing maintenance hours by almost 15 percent to 5.8 million working hours per year. To this end, HIL GmbH is to grow significantly in terms of personnel and have a staff of approximately 3,500 employees by 2031.

The plants in Sankt Wendel and Doberlug-Kirchhain will be expanded to become centers of excellence for tracked and wheeled vehicles. The plant in Darmstadt will be turned into a new service center.

In addition to recruiting staff, investments are also being made into technical qualification and knowledge transfer. For this purpose, HIL GmbH is in the process of establishing a knowledge management system that ensures the exchange of knowledge and experience by means of suitable concepts and, at the same time, keeps pace with the progressive digitalization of land systems.

Many years of comprehensive services

HIL GmbH was founded on 16 February 2005 as a cooperation company between the Federal Government and the defense industry and was called “Heeresinstandsetzungslogistik Industrie-Holding GmbH” at the time. Since the takeover of all company shares by the Federal Government in February 2013, the Federal Government has been running the company under the name “Heeresinstandsetzungslogistik GmbH” as a fully owned in-house company.

HIL GmbH complements and supports the military logistic units in many respects. The scope of the company’s maintenance tasks ranges from protected wheeled and tracked vehicles and unprotected military wheeled and tracked vehicles and trailers to selected semi-militarized and commercial wheeled vehicles as well as the corresponding trailers. 

In this way, the Bundeswehr is reliably assured of the required availability of these land-based weapon systems and vehicles. The management, repair and maintenance services required for this purpose are provided by the company both via its own workshops and bases and, additionally, through contracts awarded on the market.

The services provided by HIL GmbH therefore contribute to the reduction of overall maintenance costs in the Bundeswehr. This creates scope for investment measures and improves the core capabilities of the armed forces, such as national and collective defense.