Inco Limited was an American-Canadian mining company that existed from 1902 to 2007. The company was founded as a New Jersey corporation in 1902 as the International Nickel Company by Robert Means Thompson and J. P. Morgan. In 1916, the company created a Canadian subsidiary, the International Nickel Company of Canada Limited, which in 1928 took over the American parent. In April 1976, International Nickel changed its name to Inco Limited. Inco was one of Canada's largest corporations and one of the world's largest nickel producers. In late 2006 the company was acquired by Vale of Brazil, and in 2007 became Vale Canada.
History
Founding of Inco The company was founded following the discovery by blacksmith Tom Flanagan in Copper Cliff, Ontario of chalcopyrite deposits, while the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built in 1883; the township of Sudbury soon followed in 1884 when JL Morris, provincial land surveyor, laid it out. Initially, ore was shipped for smelting to a plant in Constable Hook, New Jersey, owned by the Orford Copper Company. Processing revealed in 1884 that the ore was also rich in nickel and exploration tests revealed an enormous potential. In 1893 Robert M. Thompson patented the Orford "Tops and Bottoms" process; this was the first commercially viable method of separating (Fe,Ni)9S8 Pentlandite-borne Nickel from the CuFeS2 Chalcopyrite-borne Copper. The Spanish-American War focused the eyes of the world on nickel steel, because in the Battle of Manila Bay and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, the American losses were negligible while the Spanish losses were catastrophic. This was the result of the nickel steel used by the Americans to clad their hulls. The Spanish Navy had ignored to their peril the 1889 paper by James Riley, "Alloys of Nickel and Steel", and the market for nickel was made. The next year saw the introduction by Bethlehem Steel of a virtually indestructible nickel steel automobile axle. Nickel mining started in Sudbury, Ontario in 1902, and that year, the International Nickel Company, Ltd. was created by Thompson and John Pierpont Morgan in New York, NY as a joint venture between Canadian Copper Company, Orford Copper Company, and American Nickel Works, with a capitalization of $28 million. In 1905, Monel alloy was discovered by Robert Crooks Stanley (1876-1951) and named for Inco President Ambrose Monell. Meanwhile, the development of austenitic stainless steel was launched by a pair of Krupp engineers known today as AISI Type 304 or simply 18/8, which indicates a nickel content of 8%. This novelty would assure the 20th-century success of the firm. In 1916, the International Nickel Company of Canada, Ltd. was incorporated in Copper Cliff in Sudbury; this entity was a subsidiary of New York-based Inco. The company built a new refinery in Port Colborne in 1918 and during the following year, the company first began using the trade name Inco. During the 1919 Ontario general election, The Toronto World pursued a simmering scandal from 1916 concerning Inco and alleged provincial support of wartime shipments of the metal to Germany via the cargo submarine Deutschland. On 31 October 1928 the Canadian body corporate and its American parent switched roles and the Canadian became the parent. On 1 January 1929 the corporation acquired the British-owned Mond Nickel Company in exchange for treasury shares, to solve the Frood Mine problem. By 1931, Stanley had progressed to President of the firm. Between 1935 and 1939, sales exceeded 200 million pounds annually, which was more than 80% of world consumption. A significant proportion of these sales found their way to the United States, with other notable markets including the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany. Approximately 9 percent of company's total sales from 1934 to 1939 were to Nazi Germany, mainly to meet the growing demand of the country's armaments industry.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
