Plansee USA celebrates eighty years this month
September 9, 2019
Plansee USA LLC, Franklin, Massachusetts, USA, the North American division of Austria’s Plansee Group, celebrates its eightieth anniversary this year. The company was founded as American Electro Metal Corp. in 1939 in Maryland, USA, by Dr Paul Schwarzkopf, the founder of Plansee Group in Reutte, Austria.
Buoyed by demands in the lighting industry and material developments to support the US industry during and after World War II (WWII), the company saw increased business activities within refractory metals soon after its establishment. As a result, the company changed its name to Schwarzkopf Development Corp in 1955 and established a warehouse and sales operation in Holliston, Massachusetts, in 1970.
Continuing to see rapid growth, resulting in investments into machining and the fabrication of refractory metals in the 1980s, the company later changed its name to Schwarzkopf Technologies in 1991. In the same decade, limited space and a further increase in business activities led to the establishment of a new 5,760 m2 production facility in Franklin, Massachusetts in 1996.
Following the company’s full integration into Plansee’s High Performance Materials (HPM) division in 2007, and as part of a globally operating company, Schwarzkopf Technologies changed its name to Plansee USA. The company now forms an important link between Plansee HPM in Europe and the US market. Mill products, produced at sites in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France, are shipped to Franklin for the manufacture and distribution of products for North American customers.
Plansee Group, which is one of the world’s leading suppliers of Powder Metallurgy products and components, was established in 1921 and will celebrate one hundred years in 2021. In recent years, the group has increased its presence in the US market significantly. Including the sister divisions GTP and Ceratizit, the group operates seven production sites in the US and employs more than 1,100 staff.
