History
1906 - 1918
Ever since it was entered in the Commercial Register on June 28, 1906, the Duisburg company Klöckner & Co has been one of the leading German steel and metal distributors. At that time its founder, Peter Klöckner, already owned an impressive mining empire which was later to bring forth Klöckner-Werke AG and Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG. Klöckner & Co was the heart of the group, but from the very beginning also did business as an independent steel and metal distributor.
1918 - 1940
Being close to its customers was always one of the company's main strengths. The founding year, 1906, already saw the establishment of the first branch offices in Cologne and Duesseldorf. In the following years, further branches were set up, so that Klöckner & Co soon boasted a network of branch offices all over Germany. In the 1920's and 1930's, the trading house established its first branches in other European countries, as well as in South and North America, and created its own foreign operations department. These were the first steps in the direction of internationalization, which led to the development of an international trading network after the Second World War.
1940 - 1953
When Peter Klöckner died in 1940, his heirs, the Henle family, continued to run the company. Under their management, Klöckner & Co grew into a highly diversified trading house, after legally splitting off from Klöckner-Werke AG and Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG in the 1950's, but keeping the trade in steel and metal as a core business. After the boom of the post-war "Wirtschaftswunder" years, when Klöckner & Co rose to be one of the biggest trading houses in Europe, the trading group also continued to grow during the following years of crisis in the world economy in general and the steel industry in particular. This was aided not only by the wide variety of its product range and the international orientation of its trading operations, but also by its flexibility in the steel trading segment.
1953 - 1997
Since the end of the 1960's, the company has been purposefully building up its stockholding steel trade, and opened its first Steel Service Center in the 1970's. Orientation to the wishes of the customer and partnership with suppliers became its guiding principle. In the late 1980's, ill-advised speculations led to a crisis which nearly threatened the company's very existence. In the course of the bailout, Klöckner & Co passed into the ownership of VIAG AG, but retained its autonomy. Under new management in the 1990's, Klöckner & Co developed into a modern, international distribution specialist doing business in such areas as steel, PC products, chemistry, textiles and mobile constructions. In the steel sector, Klöckner & Co considerably expanded its international presence during these years.
1997 - 2004
Since the end of the 1990's, the company has once again been focusing entirely on its core business, the distribution of steel and metal products. Owned by Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer since the end of 2004, the tradition-rich company was launched on the stock exchange exactly 100 years to the day after its founding. The IPO makes it eminently clear that even in times of accelerated consolidation, Klöckner & Co intends to continue expanding its leading position as international distributing group and thus write a new chapter in its one hundred year success story.
2008 …
Klöckner & Co Group is today the biggest producer-independent steel and metal distributor in the combined markets of Europe and North America. The company is represented in more than 15 countries around the world, with approximately 250 warehouses and prefabrication plants, and employs a total of about 10,000 people. With its broad spectrum of products and services, Klöckner & Co Group serves a total of roughly 175,000 customers from its locations in Europe and North America. The customers of Klöckner & Co Group come from a large number of different industries, with the focus primarily on construction, as well as engine and plant construction.
A company that has been successfully asserting itself on the market for around 100 years, has a lot to tell …
