<p><br />

The plant history starts in<br />

1896. The plant was founded by Konrad Gamper, a Swiss, who took out<br />

Russian citizenship in 1896 and was entered among the merchants; he<br />

became a St. Petersburg merchant of the first guild. In the same year<br />

Konrad Gamper bought a plot near the Kramatorska station to build a<br />

plant there. The first acting managing director of the plant was<br />

Mavrykiy Khorzhevsky.</p><br />

<p><br />

The plant, founded by<br />

Konrad Gamper, became one of the biggest metallurgical and machine<br />

building plants of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century.</p><br />

<p><br />

On 17 November 1920 the<br />

plant was nationalized. Now it is the Starokramatorsk Machine<br />

Building Plant.</p>