SKF

About SKF

The story of SKF, the Swedish Ball Bearing Factory, begins with a problem rooted in the very ground of Gothenburg, Sweden: mud. In the early 1900s, the city's soft soil caused buildings to settle, misaligning machinery and creating constant issues. Sven Wingquist, a thirty-year-old plant engineer, grew tired of the frequent bearing failures this caused. This frustration led to his breakthrough 1907 invention: the double-row self-aligning ball bearing. With this innovation, Aktiebolaget Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF) was founded on February 16, 1907, with Wingquist as a founder and its first Managing Director, and Axel Carlander as Chairman of the Board. The new bearing was an immediate success. By 1912, SKF was represented in 32 countries, its growth tied to the booming automotive industry. A notable chapter in its journey was the creation of a subsidiary, Volvo, in 1926, which SKF funded to test its bearings in a real-world automotive application before divesting it in 1935 to focus on the core bearing business. The company has been publicly traded for decades, with a listing on the Geneva stock exchange as early as 1935. Today, SKF is the world's largest bearing manufacturer, a testament to an invention born from a simple, yet foundational, industrial challenge.