Salzgitter Mannesmann Handel GmbH is the management company at the head of the business unit Trading of the Salzgitter Group. The company can look back on 60 years of history that dates back to the Düsseldorf-based undertaking Otto R. Krause Eisengroßhaus GmbH.

The Salzgitter Group and its predecessors, however, have almost a century of experience in trading. The Group’s first trading company was founded in 1917 under the name of the Werkhandelsfirma des Peiner Walzwerks GmbH. This business that first began towards the end of World War I rapidly developed into a versatile and powerful national and international trading group with numerous bases, companies and direct export agents which was regularly restructured and adapted to meet the needs of its customers over the course of the decades.