On Monday, 13 October 2025, Polish Armaments Group (PGZ) announced that, together with Rheinmetall Landsysteme, a subsidiary of the German Rheinmetall AG group, it had signed a cooperation agreement on strategic collaboration for support vehicles for the Polish Armed Forces.
Photo: PGZ
The agreement aims to create a joint venture to establish a European Support Vehicles Centre. Its purpose will be to develop an armored recovery vehicle, an armored engineering vehicle with mine-clearing capability, and an accompanying bridge on an armored chassis. Through the signed agreement, Polish Armaments Group (PGZ) and Rheinmetall are contributing to the construction of an all-European defense capability. This is another step toward enhancing security and strengthening Europe’s defense, especially in the context of threats from the East.
“As part of building a global brand, PGZ focuses on diversifying our foreign partners, and Rheinmetall is a long-proven partner, one of the key defense companies in Europe. Today’s agreement opens the way to extend our cooperation to additional solutions, including those we will be able to offer jointly to external markets. The agreement that initiates this new potential cooperation is also important for the Military Automotive Works in Poznań and possibly for the Poznań ‘Ceglorz’. It creates business development opportunities and is proof of production diversification within the PGZ Group. The companies located in Poznań are very important to us,” said Adam Leszkiewicz, president of the management board of PGZ.
Dr. Björn Bernhard, Managing Director of Rheinmetall Vehicle Systems Europe: “The Memorandum of Understanding symbolizes our mutual understanding, our shared goals and the intention to work closely together — to exchange knowledge, leverage our collective strengths and explore new opportunities. By signing the MoU we not only open the door to expanding Polish heavy-vehicle production capacity, but also contribute to building a pan-European defense capability, new multinational partnerships, redundancy of capabilities – which is so important given the current threat from the East – and multinational supply chains. This is another step toward making Europe safer and stronger.”
Rheinmetall AG is one of the leading suppliers of tracked and wheeled armored vehicles and the designer of the Keiler NG armored engineering vehicle. The group also has a significant technological stake in the development of the Leopard 2A4 tank. In addition, Rheinmetall has extensive experience and specialized expertise in the design, manufacture and servicing of armored vehicles. The group already has an established presence in Poland through its subsidiary Rheinmetall Polska.
Press release
MILMAG Commentary:
On 26 February this year, Rheinmetall Landsysteme gave a presentation of the heavy engineering vehicle Pionierpanzer 3 Kodiak to commanders of engineering subunits of the Polish Land Forces. Rheinmetall AG now offers a new-generation vehicle, the aforementioned Keiler NG, which debuted at Eurosatory 2024 and is based on the Kodiak chassis. It features a modular equipment architecture that allows it to be rapidly reconfigured into a mine-clearing engineer tank (Minenräumpanzer, MiRPz) as the successor to the Keiler vehicle on the Leopard 1 chassis.
On 27 June 2024, then Deputy Minister of State Assets Marcin Kulasek met with representatives of Rheinmetall Polska. The meeting concerned current and future cooperation between defense companies overseen by the Ministry of State Assets and Rheinmetall in the area of military equipment production.
Earlier, Rheinmetall Polska together with Rheinmetall Landsysteme unsuccessfully participated in the procurement procedure for the supply of 29 heavy tracked recovery vehicles codenamed Kajman for the Polish military, likely offering the latest Bergepanzer 3 Büffel ARV. The procedure was cancelled on 17 February 2023.
According to the Inspectorate for Support of the Armed Forces, the Polish Armed Forces currently operate roughly 300 vehicles from the WZT family (primarily older WZT-2 and somewhat newer WZT-3 — of the 29 units some were sent to Ukraine), plus 28 German Bergepanzer 2A2. These vehicles are likely to be phased out in the coming years.
The US M88A2 HERCULES (Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System) is currently being fielded, with a total of 38 units. In addition, under the second implementation contract for K2 and K2PL tanks, deliveries of 81 accompanying vehicles of three types are planned: 31 K2PL ARV (Armoured Recovery Vehicles), 25 K2PL CEV (Combat Engineering Vehicles) and 25 K2PL LBV (Launched Bridge Vehicles).
The Polish Armed Forces also operate about 100 BLG-67M2 launched bridges and six German Biber bridges, and there are plans to introduce 25 new M1110 JAB bridges. In the category of engineering support vehicles, there are also Engineering and Road Machines: 8 MID units and 1 MID-M unit.
💥 Mamy to! Porozumienie o współpracy @PGZ_pl–@RheinmetallAG podpisane!
✅ Cel → utworzenie Europejskiego Centrum Wozów Wsparcia w ramach sp. joint venture. Opracowany zostanie opancerzony wóz inżynieryjny z funkcją rozminowywania i most towarzyszący na podwoziu opancerzonym. pic.twitter.com/L5zCbnZMjQ
— Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa🇵🇱 (@PGZ_pl) October 13, 2025
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