Norsk Hydro

U.S. Headquarters: Norsk Hydro Americas, Inc. 100 North Tampa Street, Suite 3350 < Hydro is an industrial group based on the processing of natural resources to meet needs for food, energy and materials. We must do this in ways that do not diminish the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The challenge is to find a proper balance between caring for the environment and serving human needs. We want to take our part of this responsibility. So we are designing our products to have the minimum adverse effect on the environment throughout their entire life cycle. We will conduct our business activities in accordance with the demands of the environment and demonstrate openness in environmental questions. By doing this, we hope to prove that we are worthy of our licence to operate.' Key Dates: Norsk Hydro ASA is the largest public industrial company in Norway, with operations in three core areas: oil and energy, light metals, and agriculture, such as agricultural chemicals. Fertilizer ranks as the company's leading product, but revenues from oil and gas contribute almost half of the company's profits. Norsk Hydro's light metals division is involved with the manufacture of aluminum and magnesium, and the company is a leading producer of PVC pipe in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. World War II brought far more change than the destruction of the Rjukan plant. After the bombing of Hydro's Heroya plants in 1944 and the financial losses that resulted, the company moved to consolidate much of its business in Norway and to expand the scope of its interests. While 97 percent of the company's shares were owned by foreigners at the outbreak of World War II, after armistice the Norwegian government seized German holdings and took a 48 percent stake, which along with additional purchases and reparation rose to a 51 percent government stake in the company. Starting in the 1950s, Hydro expanded into a number of new businesses, both directly and indirectly related to its core fertilizer production. In 1951, Hydro began production of magnesium metal and polyvinyl. In 1967, the company opened an aluminum reduction plant and semi-fabricating facility at Karmoy, Norway, and constructed the Rldal-Suldal hydro-electric facility to power the Karmoy works. The company also made preliminary steps in seafood with its fish-arming subsidiary, MOWI, in 1969. With Hydro's 1965 and 1967 opening of two Norwegian ammonia plants using naphtha (a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons distilled from petroleum, coal tar, and other hydrocarbon-rich substances) and heavy fuel oil feedstocks in the production process, the company became dependent on outside suppliers of raw materials. Attempting to supply its own hydrogen for ammonia production, Hydro began investigating opportunities in gas and oil production in the late 1960s. These initiatives, paired with a new management strategy starting in the late 1960s, spurred tremendous growth that transformed the company into an industrial group. Under the leadership of Johan B. Holte (president from 1967 to 1977 and chairman of the board from 1977 to 1985), Hydro restructured not only its policies on employee relations but its overall organizational structure. Holte set new standards for cooperation between management and workforce at all levels of Hydro; and those levels multiplied rapidly, as Holte initiated aggressive moves to expand and diversify core business beyond domestic fertilizers and into light metals, gas and oil, and eventually other segments on an international scale. In a 1990 retrospective article, Holte's successor as president, Odd Narud, summarized the organizational strategy for Hydro's in-house publication, Profile Magazine: 'The company has concentrated on growth in its core areas; agriculture, oil and gas, light metals and petrochemicals. It is the sustained efforts to improve in these areas which have created the basis for serious involvement in new product areas.' By the early 1970s