History
In 1856 Köpings Mechanical Workshop was founded of Otto Gottfrid Hallström.
The company manufactured and repaired farm machinery, and soon they began to
manufacture various types of machinery and other mechanical products needed
for the industrialization of Sweden. The machines were marketed under the brand "KÖPING".
In the 1920s the company was acquired by AB Volvo. At Köpings mechanical workshop Volvo
produced gearboxes and rear axles for cars and trucks and also the machines that Volvo
needed in its own production. In the 1960s, Volvo took the decision to stop its own production
of machine tools. Just then they were in need for more space and capacity too be able to
increase the manufacture of transmissions for growing production volumes. The machine tool
production was sold to the Swedish government and became a part of conglomerate Statsföretag
which was strongly associated with Sweden's defense industry.
The production of machine tools were in 1968 moved from Köping to premises freed after the closure
of the Central Special workshops on Norrmälarstrand in Västerås. Volvo used the liberated engineering
capacity in Köping to increase its production of transmissions, an activity that left their mark on
Köping as an industrial city.
Within Statsföretag formed the afiliate SMT Swedish Machine Tool Company. To this company it was added
additional activities within the Swedish engineering technology. SMT consisted of a number of different
divisions. SMT in Västerås produced lathes of the brands KÖPING and Swedturn. They also developed
electronics and software for numerical control system. Within the SMT group were also SMT PULLMAX in
Gothenburg who made numerically controlled sheet metal machines and SMT HOLM in Ronneby producerd
machining. For some years Sajo (SMT Sajo), Värnamo also was included in the group.
Stadsföretag was wound up in the break between 1980 - and 1990's. SMT with Swedturn division in Västerås
and the other companies in the machine tool manufacturing gradually sold off.
SMT owned large and attractive land in Västerås, this led to a real estate company in 1990 bought SMT
with the intention to exploit the land areas. In 1992, it was many who fell victims for the property
crisis, including the real estate company that now owned SMT. SMT was acquired subsequently by the
legendary "Big Bengt" Bengt Erlandsson, along with his partner, CG Johansson. The cooperation between
Big Bengt Johansson and CG ceased later and CG Jackson and his family ran SMT until CG Johansson's
sudden death in autumn 2001.
In 2002, Investor and the Industrial Development Fund came in as new owners and merged SMT with
robot manufacturer NEOS. The newly merged company was named SMT Tricept. During 2004 the business
went through some changes because of financial difficulties. Tricept business
(parallelkinematic robots) was sold to a Spanish company and the Swedturndivision(Lathes)
was sold to the owners of MT Storebro also these machine tools manufacturers.
The financial crisis that hit the world in 2008 brought new necessary changes, one of them
was that the manufacturing of machine tools moved back to Köping after 44 years in Västerås.
SMT and Köpings Mechanical Workshop has been a pioneer in tool engineering, in 1965 the company presented
its first numerically controlled lathe. In 1972, SMT launched its first CNC control ie. with control
systems where the block preparation, logic and interpolatorer is implemented in a software that runs on a
microprocessor.
Reliability and lasting value are key words for SMT Machine, both then and now.