The Modern story of Stainless Steel started at the beginning of 20th century with an experiment at the Krupp development laboratory in Essen, Germany.By adding 12% chromium to steel, scientists found that the passivity of the chromium-the ability to protect itself against corrosive attack was transferred to the iron. This was the birth of modern stainless steel, and the products was then registered under the trade name NIROSTA®.
At about the same time Thyssen was involved in similar experiments and also succeeded in developing a stainless steel. On the 1st of January 1995, 80 years after the patent application, the two major German steel companies, Krupp and Thyssen merged their respective stainless steel flat operations to form a new company that was initially known as Krupp Thyssen Nirosta GmbH. This was, at the time, the biggest producer of stainless flat products in the world. In 1997 the name was changed to Krupp Thyssen Stainless, and then in 2002 it became ThyssenKrupp Stainless, as part of the reorganization within the ThyssenKrupp Group.Shanghai Pudong Iron and Steel Company(SPS) is a subsidiary of the Baosteel Group, but it was previously known as Shanghai No.3 Iron and Steel Plant. SPS has more than 86 years of experience in steel production and has an annual capacity of 2.5 million tons of steel. It is one of the major producer of plate and long product in China. In 1997 Krupp Thyssen Stainless and Shanghai Pudong Iron & Steel formed a Joint Venture to build a stainless steel plant in Pudong under the name Shanghai Krupp Stainless(SKS).The plant was built in stages, and was intially commissioned in 2001, with one Sendzimir cold rolling mill, a bright annealing line, a skin pass mill, a slitting line, cut to length line and polishing line. In the period between 2001 and 2006, two more Sendzimir cold rolling mills were added, along with a hot annealing and pickling line, a cold annealing and pickling line, two re-coiling lines and a tension leveller. The plant is now complete and represents an overall investment of approximately $600 million.