Petter Olsson
Petter Olsson (* 1830 in Fleninge , Skåne ; † 1911 ) was a Swedish consul, entrepreneur and member of the Swedish parliament . The center of his entrepreneurial activity was the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg .
Life
Petter Olsson grew up in poor conditions and was very religious even in his youth. He dreamed of training as a priest, which, however, was very expensive and was therefore denied him.
After working as a salesman in a Helsingborg shop, he founded his own grain trade in 1853 . Business did well. This was mainly due to the poor supply situation in Great Britain, which was at war with Russia on the side of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War. Great Britain bought much of the grain imported from abroad from Olsson's company. Olsson successfully invested the profits in the further expansion of his company. In 1870 he was the richest resident of Helsingborg.
In the same year he expanded his grain business by buying the Rögle estate north of Helsingborg in order to grow the much sought-after “Gutshofseat” there. He also showed entrepreneurial foresight later when cheap wheat from America began to flood the Swedish market and he put the grain trade back and from then on concentrated on the cultivation of sugar beet and the production of dairy products.
Petter Olsson also made a name for himself by setting up several factories in Helsingborg. Alone or with partners, he founded a steam-powered mill , a brick factory , a sugar factory together with the entrepreneur Nils Persson and a rubber factory (from which the Tretorn company later emerged). He also saw the importance of good transport connections for economic success and was therefore behind many of the new railway lines from Helsingborg between 1865 and 1885 to Eslöv , Hässleholm , Landskrona and Värnamo, among others . He also pushed the expansion of the Helsingborg port by deepening existing and building new port basins.
In 1870 Olsson was appointed consul of the Swedish Reichstag in Germany. This title was given to members of the Reichstag in order to protect Sweden's commercial interests in the respective country. Olsson held this office until 1895.
Petter Olsson was a supporter of the Swedish abstinence movement and was very religious. Despite his wealth, he lived a simple life in an apartment next to his office building in central Helsingborg. He regularly donated large sums of money to social projects in Helsingborg, which together amounted to over one million kroner (today's value around 40 million kroner , around 4 million euros).
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Olsson, Petter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish entrepreneur, member of the Reichstag and consul |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1830 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fleninge , Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1911 |