Montanwerke Brixlegg
| Montanwerke Brixlegg AG | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1463 |
| Seat |
Brixlegg , Tyrol , Austria
|
| Number of employees | ~ 300 |
| sales | 777 million euros |
| Branch | Basic material production |
| Website | www.montanwerke-brixlegg.com |
| Status: 2017 | |
The mining Brixlegg are a Tyrolean producer of copper - semi-finished products based in Brixlegg . According to the first documentary mention, the Brixlegg copper-silver smelter dates back to 1463 at the latest. Duke Ludwig the Rich laid the foundation stone for the plant, which was closely linked to mining in Tyrol until the 20th century. With the decline in regional ore production, the recovery of copper from scrap metals became increasingly important. Today 100% of the semi-finished products sold are made from recycled copper. Electric power has been used for electrolytic copper refining since 1885utilized. Sheets of copper from Brixlegg were used, among other things, to cover the roofs of the Palace of Justice , the Parliament building and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and in the past coinage metals were also supplied to Vienna, Milan and Venice. In 2017, Montanwerke Brixlegg was the fifth company with the highest turnover in the state of Tyrol with an annual turnover of 777 million euros.
According to its own information, the company's export share is over 80%. On April 4, 2012, Montanwerke Brixlegg AG became the property of the Swiss company Umcor AG . Since then, 99% of the company's shares have been held indirectly via the Austrian subsidiary Umcor Holding GmbH, the remaining percent of the shares belong directly to Umcor AG. The French Gindre Group has been a sister company of Montanwerke Brixlegg since the takeover . Both companies were part of the conglomerate A-Tec Industries until 2012 . In September 2013 it was announced that the Russian copper producer UGMK had taken over 10% of the shares in Montanwerke Brixlegg. This report was only denied in 2014. Shares were never sold, although UGMK had been named as a co-owner on the Montanwerke website for a long time.
According to the company, the main location in Brixlegg employed over 300 people in 2019. The Slovak copper smelter Kovohuty, as in Krompachy with around 150 employees has been another location since it was taken over in 2002 . 48,000 tons of anode copper are produced there annually, which are refined into cathodes in Brixlegg. Between 20 and 25% of the annual electricity requirements of Montanwerke Brixlegg can be covered by three small hydropower plants on Alpbach , which are owned by the subsidiary Montanwerke Brixlegg Wasserkraftwerke GmbH and together provide a total capacity of 18.1 gigawatt hours.
The company's product range includes high-purity copper cathodes, as well as pure copper in the form of continuously cast round bolts and rolled plates. Powdered copper oxychloride is used in fungicides . Due to the electrolytic production process, precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium accumulate as "waste materials" in the anode sludge . These are also sold by the company.
In the 1980s, Montanwerke Brixlegg had a negative impact due to the greatly increased PCDD loads in the vicinity of the company and in the bodies of some residents. In some cases, air concentrations of 2.56 picograms per cubic meter of breathing air were measured near the company premises. The contamination of the area was directly linked to the Brixlegg coal and steel works.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Montanwerke Brixlegg: Company accessed on April 20, 2019
- ↑ a b top.tirol: Tyrol's top-selling individual companies accessed on April 20, 2019
- ^ Montanwerke Brixlegg: History accessed on April 20, 2019
- ↑ a b Montanwerke Brixlegg: Owner accessed on April 20, 2019
- ^ Gindre: History accessed on August 5, 2019
- ^ Industriemagazin.at: A-Tec bankruptcy: Umcor reported the Brixlegg purchase to the competition authority, accessed on April 20, 2019
- ↑ tt.com: Montanwerke provide guesswork, accessed on April 20, 2019
- ↑ Kovohuty as: Home Page accessed April 20, 2019
- ↑ Montanwerke Brixlegg: Product range accessed on April 20, 2019
- ↑ Spiegel: Every Feuerle accessed on August 4, 2019
- ↑ dip21.bundestag.de: Answer of the federal government to the big question of the MP Dr. Klaus-Dieter Feige (1994) accessed on August 4, 2019