FLSmidth

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A success set in cement

By Caspar Jørgensen, Historiker (5 stories)

F.L. Smidth & Co (now FLSmidth) was established in 1882 as a firm of consulting engineers by Frederik Læssøe Smidth. The Group is based in Valby, Copenhagen. A couple of years after the founding, Poul Larsen and Alexander Foss joined the company and in 1887, FLSmidth won its first contract in the cement industry. Around the turn of the century, with the introduction of the tube mill and rotary kiln, the company took the lead in technological innovations in the cement industry. Cement began to be increasingly used in the construction industry by circa 1900.

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Cementing the future of Danish exports

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Story written by Caspar Jørgensen

Time / Periode 1885

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In 1885, the young Alexander Foss arrived in Riga to sell brickworks machinery. Following Latvian independence, Foss' company, F.L. Smidth & Co., in 1928-29 supplied machinery for Riga's cement factory, which enabled the plant to cover most of Latvia's demand for cement. F.L. Smidth was headed by three engineers, and Foss was one of them. He became a leading spokesman for Danish industry and Denmark as an industrial nation. Foss advocated that industry should take over from agriculture as the leading Danish export sector. His arguments carried weight because from around the year 1900 his company had succeeded in exporting cement machinery not only to the Baltic states, but to most of the world, from the USA to China.