Classic products returning to Kiruna

Nybergs Mekaniska Verkstad AB is acquiring Steelworks i Grängesberg AB, a manufacturer of vehicles for smelting plants and steelworks. The seller is Vätterledens Invest AB.

The Kiruna-based company Nybergs Mekaniska Verkstad is taking over GIA’s production of vehicles for smelting plants and steelworks. Production was hived off to Steelworks i Grängesberg AB in conjunction with Atlas Copco’s purchase of GIA. At the same time ownership of the mining trucks and the Kiruna Truck brand was transferred to Atlas Copco.

A number of the steelwork products come from the company Kiruna Truck, which was taken over by GIA and moved to Grängesberg in 1998. There has long been a business relationship between Nybergs Mekaniska Verkstad and GIA, and the transfer is being carried out in a spirit of cordial collaboration, so as to retain optimum service for existing and new customers.

“This is a further step in our strategic development of strengthening vehicle manufacture, and we will be working slowly but surely,” says Niklas Pääjärvi, co-owner of Nybergs Mekaniska Verkstad.

The company is already an expert manufacturer of special vehicles, and has made extensive long-term investments in premises and staffing on the vehicles side – including a dedicated hydraulics department and acquisition of the vehicle company AB Dahlberg & Roos.

During the autumn more details regarding the acquired company will be publicised. For example, no definite decision has yet been made on the future place of business.

“Our own department NMV Special Vehicles is now a well-functioning vehicle builder, and we can obviously see common development opportunities. But it does not quite go without saying that we will be able to select Kiruna as the place of business for the new company, as accommodation and manpower are hard to come by right now,” says Kenth Mukka from Nybergs Mekaniska, who will be the new CEO of the acquired company.

A positive shared approach has been taken to the conclusion of the deal, and the seller Vätterleden is very optimistic about it being the Kiruna based company that is taking over.

“There has been great interest in the company. We are convinced that Nybergs Mekaniska is the right company for further development of the business,” concludes Daniel Utbult, Vätterledens Invest’s Business Development Manager.

Brief history of Kiruna Truck
Kiruna Truck was founded in 1959 as a dedicated product-development company, based on the local knowledge of the mining industry’s requirements. Thanks to genuine knowledge of the industry and design skills – combined with major investments in brand and sales organisation – the company was successful on the international market, selling to important mining nations such as Canada, Chile, Russia and South Africa, and it had agents all over the world and licence manufacture in Japan.

Over the 40 years, up until 1998, that Kiruna Truck operated in Kiruna, the company employed 40-50 people, of whom at most 20 were designers. The company specialised in the three product categories trucks for mines, trucks for steelworks and trucks for tunnelling work, and developed and exported them in small series, with a development department and assembly in Kiruna. In 1998 Kiruna Truck was bought by GIA Industri AB, which in 2011 was in turn acquired by Atlas Copco, which now manufactures, sells and markets the product Kiruna Electric.

The steelworks’ products are currently sold both on the Nordic market and globally.

http://www.atlascopco.com/gia/aboutus/history/