History
 

The oldest factory of today's EUROPIPE shareholders owes its existence to Louis XIV! In 1685 His Majesty gave permission to build a steel mill in Dillingen an der Saar.  Engineers rolled the first sheet metal on the continent here in 1804. Five years later, the company was changed into Germany's first public limited company – this time with the imperial approval of Napoleon I.

Since then, Dillingen has always been a pioneer in technical fields: In 1897 Europe's first electrical sheet mill began operating, and in 1961 the World's first steel slab continuous casting plant.

People were just as inventive in the Ruhr – where our company headquarters are located today. A company of the later Mannesmann manufactured the first welded steel pipe in Continental Europe in 1845.

Over 40 years later the brothers Mannesmann succeeded in manufacturing steel pipes by rolling alone, without seams. The world's first pipeline was laid in the Caucasus in 1890 using their pipes. For decades, a second oil pipeline, completed in 1907, was the longest pipeline in the world. In 1970 Mannesmann was the first company to use continuous casting for large-diameter pipes in steel production as the sole method. It has remained so to this day: Mannesmann is synonymous with high-quality steel pipes of all kinds throughout the world.

The two pioneers of the steel industry – AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke and Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG – combined their experience and competences in the field of large-diameter pipe production in 1991: EUROPIPE was founded.