Construction Begins on the Kaunas Leopard 2A8 Plant; EPSO-G Signs for 25.1 Per Cent — "Up to 38" of Lithuania's 44 Tanks to Be Assembled There

In July the building contract was signed and the state's stake was "expected"; on 1 October the excavators and the share transfer arrived together. The plant is a joint venture of the two German land primes, and EPSO-G Invest, the investment arm of the state energy-transmission group, now holds a signed agreement for a quarter of it, to close within six months. Edvinas Grikšas, the economy minister, put it plainly: the state "contributes and becomes a shareholder in important projects like this one." The defence minister called armoured land equipment "an indispensable part of deterring Russia." Lithuania Defence Services puts its total investment at about EUR 50 million and the jobs at up to 100.

The figure that matters for the army is Schmidt's, and he gave it as an estimate: up to 38 assembled in Kaunas, six or more in Germany. With the first Kaunas-built tank due at the end of 2028, the tanks Lithuania receives first will come from German lines; the hall's work begins once the first of the fleet is already in service.

The plant's long-term value lies in the repair half of its name, and Schmidt's offer of a second line for Baltic customers is a bid to give it volume Lithuania's 44 tanks cannot. A hall sized for one fleet of 44, most of it assembled once, has a decade of maintenance work but only a few years of assembly; a regional customer would change that. None is named. Großwald's July dispatch asked whether the state stake had closed: it is signed, and not yet closed. Signal No. 158 recorded the ground-breaking.