KrAZ (, Kremenchutskyi Avtomobilnyi Zavod, Kremenchuk Automobile Plant, also, AvtoKrAZ) is a factory in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, that produces trucks and other special-purpose vehicles, particularly heavy-duty off-road models.[2] The factory was incorporated as a holding company combining several other factories nationwide and becoming the industrial wing of the finance-industrial group Finance and Credit, which also held the Finance and Credit bank.
History
Soviet era
KrAZ was founded on 31 August 1945 when the People's Commissariat for Transportation Routes issued a warrant to build a mechanical bridge plant in Kremenchuk. The first brick was laid in the plant foundation in 1946 and during the next eight years it produced about 600 bridges with the total length of about 27 km for use on the Dnieper, Moscow, Dniester, Volga and Daugava rivers etc. In 1956 the plant has manufactured combine harvesters and other farming machines. The Kremenchuk Combine Plant has produced 11,000 agricultural machines in the first two years of its existence.
On April 17, 1958, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to rebuild a plant for heavy-duty vehicle production.