Reader’s letter This is a debate entry, written by an external contributor. The post expresses the writer’s views.
OA announced that Treschow Fritzøe has bought back into Hunton, after they left the company in 2003. Things are probably going well. At least it did in 1992.
I summarized this merger in my book Mission Accomplished;
“Merger Hunton Bruk – Treschow Fritzøe: I have written about the 1970s and 1980s, where I devote a lot of space to the merger with Norsk Wallboard and all the struggles and frustrations that came with this merger. We who worked in Hunton were vaccinated against several mergers. We didn’t want more top-down people into production. We would manage ourselves. Possibly it was a fallacy, but not unreasonable, after all the years of fighting, also to get out of the clutches of the Norwegian Wallboard.
Suddenly we were faced with a new merger of Hunton Bruk A/S and Treschow Fritzøe in March 1992. The name of the new company became Hunton Fiber A/S. It cannot be understated that this hit both factories like a bomb. That two factories that had fought so mercilessly against each other for many years should become one company was for most an unthinkable thought.
For Hunton Arbeiderforening (HAF), thoughts went back to the time during the Norwegian Wallboard and the impoverishment of the company that then took place, and the disastrous consequences this had for Hunton. The discussion went hard. How should Hunton Arbeiderforening approach this merger? We chose to emphasize that this could strengthen both companies, and thus the workplaces in Norway. We chose to believe the assurances we received from the owners that there was a big difference between these two mergers. In this case, it was a collaboration between two equal parties.
In retrospect, Hunton Arbeiderforening has summarized and found that this decision was correct. Not just correct, but dead correct. Without this merger with a long-term industrial owner, such as Mille Marie Treschow, we would not have managed.”
