Ovako AB is a European manufacturer of engineering steel for customers e.g. in the bearing, transportation and manufacturing industries. Since 2018, Ovako has been owned by Nippon Steel Corporation.
The production is based on recycled scrap and includes steel in the form of bar, tube, ring and pre-components. Ovako is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of seamless tubes for the bearing industry.
Operations
Ovako produces bars, tubes, rings and pre-components. Ovako also produces steels for mining, rock drilling and construction applications.[3] The company has 10 production sites in Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and several sales companies in Europe, Asia and the United States.
Ovako steel is made from recycled scrap that is then refined and transformed into products such as hot-rolled or cold-rolled bars with various profiles and forms of processing, tubes, rings and pre-components.
Ovako’s customers are primarily the European engineering industry and its subcontractors, for example makers of trucks, contracting plant and industrial applications, the mining industry and the wind power industry. The majority of Ovako’s products are sold to customers in Europe but steel is also exported to North America and Asia.
Sales in 2015 were EUR 834 million and the number of employees at the end of 2015 was 2 905. Operations are divided into four business areas: Hofors, Hällefors, Bar Imatra and Bar SmeBox.
Marcus Hedblom has been CEO of Ovako since 2015. The chairman of Ovako’s board of directors is Joakim Olsson.
Products
Ovako operates on the market for long, low alloy steel products. The majority of production consists of bars, tubes and rings that are used in items such as ball bearings, products for the automotive industry, hydraulic cylinders and rock drills.
Ovako specialises in steel with a high degree of purity and low oxygen content, steel with improved machining properties and boron steel with high abrasion resistance. Ovako is Europe’s biggest manufacturer of piston rods for the hydraulics industry via its CROMAX group of companies. These are low carbon, hard chromium-plated rods of high-strength steel.