The short version
For forty years, the answer to "what does Craiova do?" was Electroputere. Not a factory among several — the factory: heavy electrical equipment, locomotives and power transformers, more than twelve thousand people on the payroll at its peak, and an entire quarter of the city built to house them.
It opened on 1 September 1949. What happened to it afterwards is the single most important thing to understand about why Craiova looks and feels the way it does — and why the neighbourhoods north and west of the centre are the size they are.
What it actually built
Two things, and they were genuinely good at both.
Power transformers. The first ones were designed in-house from 1951. Through the 1960s the works bought licences — a 200 MVA autotransformer from ELIN in Austria, locomotive transformers from ASEA in Sweden — and then stopped needing them. Between 1965 and 1975 it put up new halls and built 400 kV, 400 MVA units to its own designs. The largest transformer ever delivered inside Romania came out of Craiova in 1987: 440 MVA, for the Cernavodă nuclear plant.
Locomotives. Mine and tram locomotives first, then from 1960 diesel-electric mainline machines. The running totals are the part people repeat: over 2,400 diesel locomotives and around 1,050 electric ones, for the railways of Romania, Bulgaria, China and Poland.
That last sentence is the one worth sitting with. A city most foreigners cannot place on a map spent three decades exporting locomotives to China.
| What | When | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Works opened | 1 September 1949 | heavy electrical equipment |
| First in-house transformers | 1951 | own design, no licence |
| Largest transformer built | 1987 | 440 MVA, for Cernavodă |
| Diesel locomotives | from 1960 | over 2,400 |
| Electric locomotives | — | around 1,050 |
| Workforce at peak | 1980s | more than 12,000 |
Places in this piece
Why a factory shaped the map
Twelve thousand workers need somewhere to live, and the state built it. That is the direct, physical explanation for the scale of Craiovița Nouă and Brazda lui Novac — two of the largest planned housing districts in the country, put up for a workforce rather than grown from a village.
It also explains something visitors notice without being able to name: Craiova has a Belle Époque core of real quality — see the architecture of the centre — surrounded by a ring of blocks that has nothing to do with it. The two layers were built by two different systems for two different populations, forty years apart. The communist city covers that layer on its own terms.
Where to stay nearby
Live prices and availability on a map centred on this exact spot — hotels, apartments and hostels, so you can judge the walk from here rather than guess from an address.
Bookings made through this map earn us a commission. Your price is unaffected.
What happened after 1989
The short version is the one every Romanian industrial city shares, and Craiova's case is among the starkest: more than ten thousand people lost their jobs. The company became a holding in 1994 and was privatised; by 2012 it had just over a thousand employees against the three and a half thousand the buyer's business plan had promised, and the sale contract carried no penalty for the gap.
The rotating-machines divisions closed. Romanian business press has since reported the remaining operation winding down to a final transformer repair.
Where you can still see it
Not in a visitor centre — there isn't one. But the works are legible in the city if you know what you are looking at:
- The scale of the housing. Walk or drive through Craiovița Nouă. Nothing that size gets built for a market.
- The railway. Craiova is a junction because it had freight worth moving, which is still why getting here by train is easier than the city's size would suggest.
- The Oltenia Museum and the city's museums carry the regional story around it.
The other two works, because people confuse them
Craiova had three industrial giants, not one, and they are routinely mixed up:
- Electroputere — electrical equipment, transformers, locomotives. This page.
- The car plant — Oltcit, then Daewoo, then Ford, now Ford Otosan. Still running, still the city's largest private employer. See the car factory.
- Avioane Craiova — military aircraft at Ghercești, founded 1972. See the aircraft works.
Only one of the three still builds things at scale, and it is not the one the city is named after in old textbooks.
Further reading on this site
The history of Craiova sets the long frame — this page is one chapter of it. Craiova's maximum, 1983 is about the same decade from a different angle. If you are here as a visitor rather than a reader, what to see in Craiova is the practical page.
*Figures on this page are drawn from Romanian business press and encyclopaedic sources; last reviewed as a source set in October 2026. Where sources disagree — notably on the final closure date — we say so rather than pick one.*
