Outokumpu
Outokumpu is a group of companies headquartered in Espoo, Finland, producing stainless steel, employing about 11,500 employees in more than 30 countries. Outokumpu has a long history as a mining company, and still mines chromium ore in Keminmaa for use as ferrochrome in stainless steel.
Company history
In 1908, a large deposit of copper ore was discovered in Outokumpu, in Northern Karelia. Outokumpu (OTK) was established to develop the now-exhausted mine. In the 1940s, OTK developed the flash smelting process for smelting copper.
From 1986 to 1988 Outokumpu participated in a stainless steel cartel; it was caught in 1990, but not fined.
From 1988 to 2001 Outokumpu and the Swedish company Boliden participated in a cartel for copper tubing in the European market.
In 2001 Avesta Sheffield -which was formed from a 1991 merger of British Steel Stainless with the Swedish firm Avesta (as in Avesta Municipality)- merged with Outokumpu, forming the third-largest stainless steel producing company in the world at the time. The new company named AvestaPolarit, headquartered in Stockholm, was jointly owned by Outokumpu and the Corus Group of Swedish institutional investors. In September 2001, Outokumpu's plant construction branch Outokumpu Technology bought the German Lurgi Metallurgie in Frankfurt.