The Soviet Union recovered 29 furnaces as war damage, but failed to gain significant profits from them. According to sources, the Red Army's destructive techniques in dismantling German industrial plants proved inappropriate and wasted valuable resources. It was also challenging for Russians to reconstruct these factories within the Soviet Union. Travelers from Berlin to Moscow reported observing German machinery scattered, largely deteriorating, along every meter of track and shoulder, suffering from the harsh climatic conditions. The Russian iron and steel industry did not heavily rely on technological input from the West. Eventually, the Eastern Bloc only maintained this marginal technology to a limited extent in the recently sovietized European countries, where it was eventually abandoned.
Meanwhile large furnaces rebuilt in the 1950s in West Germany operated for approximately ten years before shutting down, due to the low cost of scrap and imported ore. The process then vanished from West Germany, concurrently with Western Europe.
In Japan furnaces also progressed towards increasingly bigger tools. However, the dwindling of local ferruginous sand deposits, along with the low cost of scrap and imported ores, eventually resulted in the gradual discontinuation of the process. The process was steadily improved by the Japanese, who developed it under various names for specialized products including ferroalloys and the recycling of steelmaking by-products. Currently, at the start of the 21st century, the Krupp-Renn process is exclusively used for ferronickel production in Japan.
By 1972 most plants in Czechoslovakia, Japan, and West Germany had ceased operations. The process was widely considered obsolete and no longer garnered the attention of industrialists.