Company history
The company dates back to 1860, when founder Georg Adam Scheid entered the family jewellery-making business in Austria, subsequently opening the G. A. Scheid refining plant in Vienna in 1888. The latter company then opened an independent enterprise in Prague in 1920. Scheid’s refining plant worked with gold and silver waste, producing pure metals from it and subsequently manufacturing and selling semi-finished products made of precious metals for jewellery and dental needs. After the Second World War, the plant was placed under the national administration of Příbram Ore Mines on 14 May 1945. There, it took its place alongside another ten precious-metal refining plants following nationalisation in 1948. It was at that time that the production of platinum catalytic gauzes was introduced, the production of platinum laboratory instruments, contacts for the electrical industry, copper and copper alloy film and AgNO3, the electrolysis of silver and many other technological procedures.
A new, independent national enterprise called SAFINA was founded on 1 January 1950, the company involved mainly in refining, testing and processing precious and rare metals, plating with precious and rare metals, the production of metal powders, the manufacture of laboratory apparatuses and instruments and the acquisition of precious metals. SAFINA was first operated as a national metallurgy enterprise after 1989, before being privatised on 30 April 1992. The company became a production and commercial organisation that gradually concentrated its work on production programmes and services that were structured in relation to separate product lines.
Since 2000 SAFINA, a.s. has a significant influence and scope in European, North America and Asian markets.
