Significant Years
| 1880
Henning Hammarlund visits Svängsta looking for a good location for his
future watch factory.
1891 Carl August Borgström is hired by Hammarlund as production manager and designer of taximeters.
1896 The first Halda taximeters were produced 1918 Halda runs into financial difficulties and Hammarlund leaves the company and Svängsta
|
. 1887 The first Halda pocket watches are produced at Svängsta.
1921 Carl August Borgström buys the watch production machinery and parts and starts AB Urfabriken. (ABU) 1926 AB Urfabriken presents its first taximeter under the name of Record
1934 Carl August Borgström dies and his son Göte becomes President of AB Urfabriken 1938 Göte Borgström designs his first taximeter. 1939 World War II starts and the market for taximeters vanishes.
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1941 Göte Borgström presents his first four Record casting reel models to Swedish wholesalers.
1949 Åke Murvall is hired as production manager and chief designer and the first spinning reel made by ABU is presented on the market.
1952 A revolutionary casting reel under the name of Ambassadeur is presented.
1954 Lennart Borgström starts at ABU and Göte and Lennart visit USA for the first time.
1955 The Borgströms import the first small mouth bass to Sweden.
1956 Garcia becomes the exclusive ABU distributor for the US.
1957 Abumatic, the first close-face reel made outside the US, is presented.
1959 ABU and Garcia badged Admiral reels were made by Everol (Italy) for a short time. These were red 4/0, 6/0, 7 1/2 /0 and urban legend say a 9/0 did exist.
1960 ABU 505, a completely new spinning reel without a bail is introduced.
1963 The first Japanese copies of the Ambassadeur show up.
1969 ABU acquires Haldex Taximeter Company in Halmstad.
1971 ABU buys the Addo-factory. (The Addo Company used to produce adding machines in that factory before the electronic revolution in that product area).
1974 Göte Borgström dies in May this year. ABU buys the Arjon Company.
1976 The majority of the ABU shares are sold to the Wallenberg Group’s Incentive AB.
1978 Garcia faces chapter 11 and Lennart Borgström moves to the US to try to save ABU’s most important market. At the end of that year ABU becomes the sole owner of Garcia, USA under the name of ABU Garcia, Inc.
1981 Lennart Borgström sells his remaining shares to Incentive and leaves the company to start his own business in the US.
1988 Incentive sells ABU Garcia to Aritmos (Another Swedish conglomerate).
1994 Aritmos sells ABU Garcia to Proventus (Again another Swedish conglomerate)
1995 Proventus sells ABU Garcia to Pure Fishing.
The images above were taken from A.B.Urfabriken's 75th Anniversary Poster.