GKN (company)

GKN plc
legal form	Corporation
founding	July 9, 1900
Seat	Redditch , UK
management	Nigel stone
Number of employees	56,100
sales	7.689 billion pounds (8.6 billion euros )
Branch	Metal processing
Website	www.gknplc.com
As of December 31, 2015

The GKN Plc ( G uest, K een and N ettlefolds ) is a British public limited company , whose origins go back to the year 1759th The company is a subsidiary of the holding company Melrose Industries .

The main fields of activity are aviation and automotive engineering . In 1931 the company was included in the FT 30 index . The company employs around 56,000 people in over 30 countries worldwide.

history

The beginnings

In 1759, Wyndham William Lewis opened an ironworks in Dowlais, South Wales, near Merthyr Tydfil . Eight years later, John Guest became the manager of the plant and found extensive coal deposits on the property. This was now used to heat the blast furnaces and replaced the charcoal that had been bought in until then . In 1782 Guest joined the company as a partner together with his future son-in-law, William Taitt. Five years later, his son Thomas Guest took over the job. His successor was John Josiah Guest in 1807, who also took over the shares of his co-owners until 1815. At that time the company was the largest iron and steel producer in the world. In 1865 it also introduced the Bessemer pear , with which steel could be produced much more easily and cost-effectively than with the processes common at the time. After Guest's death in 1852, management was passed to George Thomas Clark and Henry Bruce.

Founding of GKN

In 1898 Guest's son Iver Bertie took over management of the company. However, he showed little interest in the company and sold it the following year to industrialist Arthur Keen for £ 1.5 million . From the merger, Guest, Keen & Co. Limited emerged on July 9, 1900 . The company got its current name in 1902 when it took over Nettlefolds Limited . In the decades that followed, the company specialized primarily in the production of screws , nuts , bolts and other connecting elements. The company relied on a continuous production line that went from ore and coal mining to processing and marketing.

growth

In 1966, GKN entered the production of automotive parts by taking over Hardy Spicer Limited , a manufacturer of drive shafts for cars. In the following decades, further acquisitions of similar automotive suppliers took place, making GKN the world market leader in this field, with a share of 43 percent in 2002. In the 1980s, the company began to invest heavily in the development of new technologies in the automotive industry, but achieved only minor successes, so that from 1991 onwards the focus was again on the production of drive shafts. The production of steel and fasteners was discontinued. In the course of growing competition from Asia , GKN was forced to open up additional fields of activity. These were seen in the aviation industry and the production of military vehicles. In 1994 GKN took over Westland Helicopters and entered into a joint venture with Agusta , which resulted in the helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland . In 2004, however, GKN sold its shares to Finmeccanica . As early as 1998, the company withdrew from the production of military vehicles and sold the relevant parts of the company to Alvis Cars . In 2012 Volvo Aero was taken over.

End of self-employment

As a result of persistent profitability problems, the company was taken over by private equity firm Melrose Industries in 2018 . GKN's shareholders approved the offer in March 2018, and the British government approved it in April 2018. The purchase price for the company was around £ 8.1 billion. The stock exchange trading of the shares was subsequently discontinued. After the takeover, the new owner Melrose began to break up the company.

Business areas

Revenue by division in £ million (2015)

• GKN Driveline mainly produces drive shafts with constant velocity joints for cars, limited slip differentials and viscous clutches .
• GKN Powder Metallurgy , this division is the world market leader in the production of powder metallurgy and the products made from it with a share of 16 percent .
• GKN Aerospace , supplier to the aviation industry, primarily for BAE Systems , EADS and Airbus , fuselage production of the Honda HA-420 HondaJets .
• GKN Land Systems supplies cardan shafts for agricultural purposes.

GKN in German-speaking countries

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

GKN-Sintermetals Bonn- Bad Godesberg , toolmaking.

GKN achieved expansion on the German market in part through takeovers, acquisitions of various independent companies or outsourcing on the part of GKN customers. The most important step was the entry into Uni-Cardan AG via the British Birfield Group, which in turn was a merger of various companies: Walterscheid GmbH in Lohmar , Löhr & Bromkamp GmbH in Offenbach am Main ( cardan shafts), joint shaft construction Essen (no longer in Group), Rheinmetall Schmiede- und Presswerk Trier GmbH (since 1965, today GKN Driveline Trier GmbH), Bonn plant (since 1998, today GKN Sinter Metals Components GmbH) as well as Glaenzer Spicer (France) and Birfield Trasmissioni Bruneck ( South Tyrol , Italy) .

Later, the Opel cardan shaft plant in Kaiserslautern (2000, today: GKN Kaiserslautern GmbH), the Kiel joint shaft construction and, in addition to the agriculture division, the transmission plant in Sohland / Spree and the Mosel joint shaft plant (district of Zwickau since 1999 ).

The Offenbach am Main , Mosel and Kiel locations form GKN Driveline Deutschland GmbH, based in Offenbach. GKN Service GmbH serves the spare parts market with various “repair centers” in Germany. The development center in Lohmar mainly develops cardan shafts and mechanical and electronic limited slip differentials . Tractor mounting systems ( Walterscheid ) are also being developed at the site . GKN employs a total of around 7,000 people in Germany. The logistics service provider is the company's own GKN Freight Services, based in Offenbach am Main.

In addition to the German locations already listed, there are other plants in Europe, for example two plants in Bruneck (South Tyrol). The Driveline and Land Systems divisions are located in one plant and the Sintermetals division in the other; there are also branch plants in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland (Oleśnica), Spain , France , Croatia and Sweden.

Web links

• GKN website
• GKN Powder Metallurgy website
• GKN Driveline Industrial and Distribution Services website
• Early documents and newspaper articles on the GKN in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Board
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Annual Report 2015 ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ GKN factsheet . In: gkn.com . Retrieved February 29, 2016.
4. ↑ GKN plc History , Funding Universe
5. ↑ GKN acquires Volvo Aero for £ 633 million ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 5, 2012 
6. ↑ Melrose takeover: GKN board resigns as a whole. Retrieved June 11, 2019 . 
7. ↑ The dissolution of the 259-year-old mechanical engineering giant GKN should begin within a few weeks ( Memento from July 1, 2019 in the Internet Archive )