Koninklijke Hoogovens
Encyclopedia
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
steel producer founded in 1918. In 1999, the company merged with British Steel
British Steel
British Steel was a major British steel producer. It originated as a nationalised industry, the British Steel Corporation , formed in 1967. This was converted to a public limited company, British Steel PLC, and privatised in 1988. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index...
to create Corus Group
Corus Group
Tata Steel Europe is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest steel-maker in Europe and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel of India, one of the ten largest steel producers in the world.Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke...
steel company. In 2007, Corus Group was purchased by India-based Tata Steel
Tata Steel
Tata Steel is a multinational steel company headquartered in Jamshedpur, India and part of Tata Group. It is the world's seventh-largest steel company, with an annual crude steel capacity of 31 million tonnes, and the largest private-sector steel company in India measured by domestic production...
.
History
On April 19, 1917, H.J.E. Wenckebach, Geldolph Adriaan Kessler and others proposed to setup a steel plant in the Netherlands with a purpose to reduce Dutch industry's dependence on imports. A Founding Committee for the Dutch Blast Furnace, Steel and Rolling Works was formed on May 31, 1917, to raise the funds. Once the funds had been raised, the company was founded as Koninklijke Nederlandsche Hoogovens en Staalfabrieken N.V.Naamloze Vennootschap
is the Dutch term for a public limited liability company. The company is owned by shareholders, and the company's shares are not registered to certain owners, so that they may be traded on the public stock market....
(Royal Dutch Blast Furnaces and Steel Factories) in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
on September 20, 1918. The seed capital was provided by the city of Amsterdam, the government of the Netherlands, various private investors and Dutch companies. To provide easy access to ports, the plant was located at IJmuiden, the city on the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
coast at the mouth of and created by the diggers of the North Sea Canal
North Sea Canal
The North Sea Canal is a Dutch ship canal from Amsterdam to the North Sea at IJmuiden, constructed between 1865 and 1876 to enable seafaring vessels to reach the port of Amsterdam...
, which had been created to accommodate the deeper drafts
Draft (hull)
The draft of a ship's hull is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull , with the thickness of the hull included; in the case of not being included the draft outline would be obtained...
of steam-powered ships traveling to the port of Amsterdam.
On 6 October 1999 the company merged with British Steel Plc to form the Corus Group
Corus Group
Tata Steel Europe is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest steel-maker in Europe and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel of India, one of the ten largest steel producers in the world.Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke...
, one of the world largest steel producers.