About
Atlas Copco's founding product was born in a Swedish railway workshop: in 1873, engineer Edvard Fränckel started making railway rolling stock, and the company that became Atlas Copco spent its first decades building trains and then pneumatic rock drills — the tools that carved tunnels through Scandinavia's granite for railways and mines. 'Atlas' came from a failed vacuum brake company it absorbed; 'Copco' from the Compagnie Pneumatique Commerciale it acquired in French. The modern Atlas Copco is the world's largest maker of industrial compressors — the machines that supply compressed air to virtually every factory (from air tools to paint sprayers to packaging lines) — plus vacuum pumps, industrial power tools, and construction & mining equipment (drill rigs, rock crushers, and the equipment that builds tunnels and mines). Its compressor division is the profit engine: air compressors are the fourth utility of industry, and Atlas Copco is its dominant supplier. With about 50,000 employees and annual revenue near SEK 170 billion (US$16 billion), the Stockholm-based group has spun off its mining equipment arm (Epiroc) and its power tool brands to focus on compressors and vacuum. Its service business — maintenance contracts covering installed machines — provides the steady recurring revenue that makes Atlas Copco one of the most consistently profitable industrial companies in Europe.
Also known as: Atlas Copco
