50 years young in an old business

The company was built on one of the world’s largest deposits of quartzite slate (slates - layered = stratified/cleavable).

The slate business in Alta started around 1850, and for the first 100 years it provided mostly just roofing slates, with a maximum of about 800 men working the site. The products were sold on the internal market, but between the wars a lot of roofing slates were also exported to Scotland.
The oldest building known to utilise Alta slate on its roof is the Alta Church in Bossekop, from around 1859.

In 1958 the Stensliperiet (Stone-cutters) company was founded by local bodies. After the Second World War there was a sudden and enormous demand for good quality building materials, and the export of Alta slate for uses other than simply roofing began, with Germany, the Benelux countries and Denmark being large markets. Because there were no finishing facilities, much of the export was of half-worked slate in the form of sheets or slabs for use as flooring, for stairs, pavements, walkways and facades. The products were finished in the importing countries.

The local quarriers clearly looked upon the export of unfinished slabs and sheets as a bad deal for the local community and Finmark generally and they wanted all finishing to be done in Alta. A finished product could be marketed in a completely different way than a half-finished one, and the producer would then have full control of marketing, also in new markets, even though the sale would take place through dealers.

Secure jobs were valued highly locally, even in slate-works where the workers had local customers.

In the slate industry, finishing means the splitting of slate blocks into slabs and sheets, and the formatting of width and length sizes by saw. The saw blades have industrial diamond teeth, and the process uses large amounts of water for cooling, lubricating and removing waste sludge. Equipment has developed a great deal throughout the company's life.