Ifö Electric – 90 year anniversary
It began in 1934, on the twentieth of August of that year the organization number we still use was registered. At that time, the company went by the name Hidinge Kalkverk AB and was part of Iföverken. It was not until the seventies before the name Ifö Electric began to be used. Until then, everything that was manufactured in the large factory area was sorted under the name Ifö. The twenty thousand square meter factory was built over a few years in the late forties. D-fuses and all other types of electrical products were manufactured, at most four hundred people came to work in the mornings.
Today it’s a bit different but is still similar. The factory remains in the same place – on the edge of Lake Ivö – and many of the machines are still in use. There are not hundreds of people pouring down the stairs when it is time to go home, but still a strong thirty. The working methods have been changed and modernized, but the quality and know-how are the same.
Now ninety years later, the product range also looks different. What started with D-fuses has developed into all conceivable types of fuses, electrical equipment and lighting fixtures. We no longer only sell in Sweden, but also in large parts of the world, a world that is smaller today than it was then.
The D-fuses continue to be a faithful product on the electrical safety side, but even there the needs and the products have changed as the world has other requirements. Fuses for industry, power grids, wind turbines and solar parks have entered the range together with cabinets for power.
Over the years, a large number of designers have designed lighting fixtures for us, and we continue that tradition. In the sixties and seventies, there were names like Stig Carlsson, Gunnar Nylund, Hans-Agne Jakobsson and Sigvard Bernadotte. In the eighties, nineties and 2000s it was Knud Holscher, Duoform and Håkan Svennesson. Today we have a close collaboration with Nina and Johan Kauppi, the designer duo behind Kauppi & Kauppi. Bernadotte’s fixtures designed in the sixties, the double and single Bernadotte, are still in the range and sell as well today as they did then. The same applies to the series Light On, which was designed by Knud Holscher in the eighties.
The investments in production equipment that we have made in recent years, and that we will continue to make in the coming years, mean that we are laying the foundation for Ifö Electric to be able to celebrate 180 years in 2114. Join us for the journey!
