History

Salzgitter Mannesmann Handel GmbH is the management company at the head of the business unit Trading of the Salzgitter Group. The company can look back on 60 years of history that dates back to the Düsseldorf-based undertaking Otto R. Krause Eisengroßhaus GmbH.

The Salzgitter Group and its predecessors, however, have almost a century of experience in trading. The Group’s first trading company was founded in 1917 under the name of the Werkhandelsfirma des Peiner Walzwerks GmbH. This business that first began towards the end of World War I rapidly developed into a versatile and powerful national and international trading group with numerous bases, companies and direct export agents which was regularly restructured and adapted to meet the needs of its customers over the course of the decades.
 
Sales territories of Peiner products 1956. At that time soon after World War II, the neighboring countries to the East were of little importance as trading partners. (Illustration borrowed from Issue 3 of the Ilseder Hütte company magazine 1957)
Sales territories of Peiner products 1956. At that time soon after World War II, the neighboring countries to the East were of little importance as trading partners. (Illustration borrowed from Issue 3 of the Ilseder Hütte company magazine 1957).

From 1970 – after Ilseder Hütte was folded into the Steel Division of the then Salzgitter Group – the national and international trading companies which at this time were still operating under the umbrella of Peiner Stahlhandel GmbH and Peiner Stahlexport GmbH were gradually combined with the Salzgitter steel trading companies under the auspices of the then Salzgitter Stahl GmbH, which became Preussag Handel AG from 1992.

In 1998 when today‘s Salzgitter AG gained its independence and began to rebuild the Group, the Trading Division headed by Salzgitter Handel GmbH developed from these roots. Since 2005, the company’s new name of Salzgitter Mannesmann Handel GmbH has reflected the importance of tube products and of the Mannesmann brand in the trading environment.
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