Company News Sep 30, 2005 11:00 AM
125 years of high-tech saw steel from Remscheid
Today, ThyssenKrupp Sägenstahlcenter celebrates its 125th anniversary together with employees and business partners in the historic Stadthalle Wuppertal. The wholly owned ThyssenKrupp Stahl subsidiary, based in Remscheid, has 19 employees who in fiscal 2003/2004 generated sales of around 14 million euros.
To cut wood, plastic, metal and stone, special blades are needed. Almost every do-it-yourselfer owns a circular saw, but few know that the centerpiece of the tool is often a ThyssenKrupp Stahl product. The high-quality saw blade plates are supplied by ThyssenKrupp Sägenstahlcenter in Remscheid. The company is among the world's leading suppliers of flat-rolled steel for saw and knife manufacture. Its products include hot-rolled coils, cut-to-length hot-rolled plates, mild and hardened cold-rolled strip as well as quarto plates, which are processed and cut to size in a 5,000 square meter warehouse and production building. Over 13,000 tons of plate and strip steel in various grades and dimensions are sold per year.
Saws have been manufactured in Remscheid and the surrounding area for over 200 years. A large part of the European saw industry is concentrated there, making circular saws for various uses. ThyssenKrupp Sägenstahlcenter also has a long history. Back in 1853 the Hagen-based company Asbeck, Osthaus & Co established a warehouse in Remscheid, which is shown on a construction drawing dating from 1880. A hand-written document of the family-owned company contains a request for the "Granting of a Concession". The Hagen works began supplying puddled steel to the warehouse in Remscheid in 1855. Over the course of the years Asbeck, Osthaus & Co specialized in the supply of special starting material to tool and above all saw manufacturers.
In 1937, the company traded under the name Stahlwerke Harkot-Eicken. The next decades saw various mergers. In 1978, the company was taken over by Friedrich Krupp Hüttenwerke AG. Following further amalgamations and the steel merger in 1997, Thyssen and Krupp Hoesch combined their operations in the "Circular saws and knives" sector. In 1999, the former warehouse on Industriestrasse in Remscheid became an independent subsidiary, ThyssenKrupp Sägenstahlcenter GmbH.