A NEW CHAPTER IN THE STEEL WORLD
In 2000, Proplate Oxelösund was inaugurated–at the time called Smidesbolaget Oxelösund. The strategy is to develop the Degerfors concept but with ordinary and special steel processing, instead of stainless as in Degerfors.
When a business is to be developed in a new place, the question of “where?” arises. Near home? Near the customer? For us, the strategic place was directly adjacent to the raw material – next door to SSAB in Oxelösund. The business started by purchasing an existing company, HPJ Stål. A new factory was built and inaugurated in May 2000. En ny fabrik byggdes och invigdes i maj 2000.
GLOBAL PLAYER
Since 2000, operations in Oxelösund have continuously evolved, and the production area has been expanded with the purchase of more land and investments in new buildings and more machines. The workforce has grown from seven people to the current 100 in Oxelösund. Today, the facility is state-of-the-art, with resources to deliver products of the absolute best quality. We serve the customer from steel plate to finished component – with cutting, machining, welding and painting.
Along the way, the name Smidesbolaget changed to the more internationally viable Proplate, since a large part of the customer base is indeed international – Proplate delivers worldwide.
THE GROUP
Over the years, steel processing operations have always been the core of the Group, but there have been and are still many other business ideas. In addition to steel and IT companies, for example, the Group has run an accounting and auditing firm.
Today, in addition to Proplate, there are several companies in the Group. The parent company A Persson Affärsutveck ling AB brings together the Group’s subsidiaries and projects. The property company Oxelösundsgösen Fastigheter AB owns the industrial properties that Proplate uses. In 2018, a completely different business, Storemore, opened in the Group, a self-storage facility that was built up in Kumla by Erik Persson. Private individuals and companies rent warehouses and the first buildings were put into use with very good occupancy right from the start.
THE CEO ROLE OUTSIDE THE FAMILY
BERTIL BACKLUND
Behind the investment in Oxelösund was the then-CEO of Smidesbolaget in Degerfors, Bertil Backlund. The background of Bertil’s appointment was that he had been the CEO of a steel company within another group and was hired by Anders Persson as a recruitment consultant. After a number of candidate interviews, Bertil called Anders one day and announced: “Now I know whom to hire!”. “Who?” asked Anders. Bertil replied “I’ll take it myself!” and the matter was settled.
Bertil was for many years the CEO of Smidesbolaget in Degerfors and later chairman of the board of Proplate Oxelösund.
MAX BJÖRK
Max Björk, the Proplate CEO, has solid experience in the international engineering industry. He joined the Group as CEO of Proplate IT.
“When I started as CEO, Proplate was a steel service center, which basically only cut plates and primarily delivered to smaller customers in Sweden. Today, cutting is still a very important part of the business, but now we have the entire production chain within the gates. In addition, we work in special steel to a much greater extent.
I have an aggressive international strategy where the ambition is always to develop the company into an increasingly complete supplier of advanced products.