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Origins and early expansion
Alfa Laval was founded as AB Separator by Swedish inventor Gustaf de Laval and engineer Oscar Lamm in Stockholm in 1883. The De Laval Cream Separator Co., an American subsidiary, was founded the same year.The company’s origin was de Laval’s invention of a continuous milk separator, which he and Lamm had first patented in 1878. Prior to this, dairy producers manually skimmed cream from milk, which was laborious and time-consuming. Capable of handling up to 130 litres per hour, de Laval’s centrifugal separator made this process easier and more efficient.
In 1888, AB Separator also began selling pumps to transport skimmed milk from the separator. In 1890, AB Separator introduced the first continuous separator with disc stacks featuring conical metal discs called Alfa Discs, which increased the separation capacity.AB Separator was a privately held company until 1901, when it was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The company continued to expand internationally in the early 1900s, opening subsidiaries in Denmark, South Africa, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Yugoslavia and Ireland by 1936.In 1938, AB Separator began manufacturing its first heat exchanger. These were produced in Lund, Sweden, where later became the company’s headquarter.
Name and ownership changes
In 1963, AB Separator changed its name to Alfa-Laval AB, combining the name of the company’s founder with a reference to the Alfa Disc technology in its separators.In 1991, the company returned to private ownership after it was acquired by the Swedish packaging group Tetra Pak. It was then renamed Alfa Laval AB and made into an independent industrial group within the newly formed Tetra Laval Group.Tetra Laval sold a majority stake of Alfa Laval to the Swedish private equity group Industri Kapital in 2000, who purchased the company with the intention of listing it publicly within a five-year period. Alfa Laval returned to the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2002. As of 2019, Tetra Laval has retained a 29.1% minority stake in the company.
