History

Today’s Saar-Metallwerke GmbH was founded in Saarbrücken in 1925 by industrialists from the Siegerland region. The company was founded with the aim of supplying the iron and steel industry in the Saarland and Lorraine regions with cast or forged components for water-cooled copper fittings.

In 1935, the company Solocuivre S. A. Societé Lorraine de Forges et Fonderies de Cuivre in Thionville was founded purely as a sales company with a view to providing better support to, in particular, the steel industry in Lorraine.

After the Second World War, the shareholders of Saar-Metallwerke considered it necessary, in order to protect and expand sales, to have their own production facility in France. In March 1958, therefore, the “Sarreguemines / Moselle” works were built and the head office of the former sales company Solocuivre S. A. was relocated from Thionville to Sarreguemines. Saarbrücken continued to be home to the production of the cast parts, while forged products – especially tuyères for blast furnaces – were henceforth manufactured in Sarreguemines.

After several decades of continual company development as a component supplier of copper and copper alloys for the iron and steel industry, a second French company, SM France SARL, Sarreguemines, was founded in 1989. SM France has operated as a subsidiary of Solocuivre SARL since 1997, and its production facility is located on the same factory premises. The company specialises in the series production of precision parts in the field of drive technology, focussing on the automotive and automotive supply industries.

Within the course of a necessary product rationalisation, the small-parts foundry at the Saarbrücken location was closed in 2006.

Since then, the Saarbrücken production location has focussed on machining and welding operations for components made of pure copper and copper alloys. State-of-the-art machinery is available for turning, milling, drilling and welding the rolled, preforged or precast precursor materials, allowing both preprocessing and installation-ready finishing of complex components.