1817-1827 Alexander Ironworks 1827-1848 Machinery Manufacturing Plant 1848-1874 Mining Government Plant 1874-1898 "Belagonsky Chernye Zavod" 1898-1918 Agricultural Machine and Implement Manufacturing Plant 1918-1948 "Bialogon" Mechanical Plant 1948-1966 Mechanical Plant and Cast-Ironworks 1966-1997 Pump Manufacturing Plant in Kielce "Bialogon" since 1997 Pump Manufacturing Plant in Kielce "Bialogon" S.A.

The originator of the idea of a modern non-ferrous metal smelter in Bialogon, the first ancestor of today’s Plant, was the reverend Stanislaw Staszic – a state counsellor in the government of the Kingdom of Poland. The decision to choose this location was made as a consequence of his professional analysis of the ground conditions with regard to natural resources. The investment started with a cornerstone laid in 1814 and resulted in the production process commenced in 1817. The Plant, named the Alexander Ironworks after the Russian Tsar, smelted copper, lead and silver and further processed the product on its own rolling mill. The success in mastering the technology of silver production was commemorated on order by Staszic with a medal featuring the Smelter in relief and the inscription “The sun rose for Polish precious ores”.

The Plant still retains one of the last copies of the medal preserved as a proof of continued industry tradition in Bialogon.

Staszic’s idea was that the Smelter would yield useable wealth based on the local resources. Their shortage, financial difficulties and increasing demand for machinery and mechanical equipment finally forced the Minister of the Treasury, Earl Xavery Drucki-Lubecki, to decommission the uneconomic Smelter and restructure it into a Machinery Manufacturing Plant.

Engineers and mechanics specialists were brought down from England, modern machine tools were ordered in Manchester and Derby. In the reconstructed facilities there was place for a forging section, joinery workshop, modelling room and machine assembly section. It was slightly later that a new rolling-mill and in 1834 a furnace section were commissioned.

This organisational structure of the Plant allowed serial production of machinery and steam boilers, equipment for use in distilleries and sugar factories, apparatus for rolling mills and puddling sections, installations for paper and saw-mill furnaces and a variety of agricultural implements. During the November Uprising, the Plant manufactured rifle barrels and bored canon barrels.

The Machinery Manufacturing Plant thrived between the years 1836 – 1848. It was at that time that many government-ordered supplies were handled. Bialogon supplied equipment for the Augustov Channel and the salt production plant in Ciechocinek Spa-Resort. Opportunities slowly grew on foreign markets too.

A brilliant presentation of the Plant at that time is found in the diary of Pavel Podczashynsky, who visited the Plant in Warsaw and the Old-Polish District in order to transfer advanced industrial technologies from the Crown to Lithuania. He writes: “And there I was in Bialogon, the Promised Land, the Eighth Wonder of the World. I searched the plant throughout, battling all day with new discoveries. Splendid, exquisitely exemplary, a model plant”.

The period of the Bialogon plant’s prosperity was preceded by the construction in 1833 of a modern hardened-surface road from Warsaw to Cracow that ran next to the plant.

After the competitive Warsaw—Vienna railway line became operational, the Plant started to suffer slumping profits. The decline and stagnation gradually became even more severe as the Machinery Manufacturing Plant in Bialogon was owned by the weakening Kingdom of Poland's Treasury and could not face competition with the dynamically emerging private companies.

In 1898 the Plant was leased out to Engineer Leon Skibiński for a 30-year period. In the era of the international economic crash at the beginning of the new century, he managed to prevent the Plant’s bankruptcy owing mainly to his excellent activity among bankers and industry representatives. It was then that he established a new manufacturing entity named: “Mechanical Plant and Cast-Ironworks, Agricultural Machine and Implement Manufacturing Plant”.

The old furnace section was demolished and two new, more advanced coke-fired furnace sections were commissioned. The power section was thoroughly modernised. Instead of the water boiler a water turbine was installed to power the main drive transmission shaft and in 1912 a power generator was also commissioned.

An internal railway line was built to connect all the production facilities.

The Plant’s produced mainly agricultural implements: treadmills, blowers, grinding mills and threshing machines, harvesters, multi-line sowing machines, chaff-cutters and ploughs. Production for industrial purposes included drills, band saws, hoists, elevators, sheet-metal cutting presses, fire engines, Californian and diaphragm pumps.

The City of Warsaw provided demand for posts used for gas and electric street lamps. The Bialogon Plant customer list also specified many cities throughout Russia and the Kingdom of Poland.

The Plant then had a Government-Service Office in Warsaw, which ensured a cornucopia of orders for production.

In 1909, Bialogon had its own section as a renowned manufacturer at the St. Petersburg Fairs.

In 1928, after thirty years of the lease, Engineer Leon Skibiński purchased the Plant to become the only owner. The changes that took place at the turn of the century determined the technical and production profile of the Plant in Bialogon until 1945. Under the Nazi occupation, the Plant carried out underground production of grenade shells for resistance organisations.

After the War in 1948, the Plant was nationalised. Its products were branded made by the “Mechanical Plant and Cast-Ironworks”. The previously shaped production profile was continued but gradually extended the variety of pumps offered.

In 1947 the production of diaphragm pumps for the construction industry and agriculture was commissioned.

Subsequently, in 1950 the Plant first produced industrial pumps for municipal applications and the shipbuilding, chemical and construction industries, in 1960 pumps for channelling dense and viscous liquids and in 1963 pumps for cellulose and paper mass.

The growing expertise in this sector resulted in a change of the Plant’s name. From 1966 the Plant carried out its activities under the name of Pump Manufacturing Plant in Kielce “Bialogon”.

In the 1970’s new sections were commissioned: tooling, mechanical and casting sections, while the machinery was thoroughly upgraded.

In 1973, numerical control (NC) machine tools were introduced, and in the following year Japanese-made machining units.

In 1997, the legal ownership status of the Company was changed. The Joint-Stock Company incorporated by the majority employee shareholders of KFP “BIALOGON” purchased the ownership title from the State Treasury. In June 1998, KFP “BIALOGON” S.A. was granted Quality Management System certification according to ISO-9001 by the Polish Register of Shipping and Germanischer Lloyd.