AS Franz Krull

The company manufactured various products, including steam locomotives, equipment for power plants and the oil shale industry, and agricultural machinery.

The company was founded on 25 April 1865, when the German brazier Franz Joachim Heinrich Krull rented a coppersmith workshop from the city of Narva, which had belonged to the late Friedrich Ludwig Büll.

The company also produced boilers, e.g. for the Tallinn Power Plant and locomotives, cisterns and tanks, filters and pumps, transmissions and gears, equipment for lumber mills and copper smithies, and various cast iron products.

Before World War I AS Franz Krull received a number of contracts from the Russian military sector, particularly from three shipyards in Tallinn which were established in 1912–1913.

To avoid this, the ownership was transferred to his brother-in-law, who immediately sold the company to the Azov–Don Commercial Bank and fled with money.

[4] In 1938, the Glen Davis Shale Oil Works in Australia planned to order two tunnel ovens from AS Franz Krull; however, due to time and budget constraints the deal was not finalized.

The company continued to manufacture refrigeration equipment, which in addition to the Estonian market was exported to Lithuania, but occasionally also to India, Iran, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

After the start of the World War II, the equipment of the metal works and employees were transferred to Russia to avoid capture by German forces.

The plant production included large-scale ventilators, centrifugal pumps, high-power steam boilers, conveyors, and elevators.