Like nearby Mauthausen, the Gusen camps also rented inmates out to various local businesses as slave labour. In October 1941, several huts were separated from the Gusen subcamp by barbed wire and turned into a separate "Prisoner of War Labour Camp" (). This camp had many prisoners of war, mostly Soviet officers. By 1942 the production capacity of Mauthausen and the Gusen camps had reached its peak. The Gusen site was expanded to include the central depot of the SS, where various goods, which had been seized from occupied territories, were sorted and then dispatched to Germany. Local quarries and businesses were in constant need of a new source of labour as more and more Austrians were drafted into the Wehrmacht.