75th Anniversary of the Aarsleff Group

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Steady and controlled growth since 1947

This year we can celebrate it has been 75 years since our founder, Per Aarsleff, bought his first excavator and established the company that Pipe Technologies is proud of being a part of today. On 4 January 1947, the 29-year-old Per Aarsleff, MSc in engineering, left a secure position with the Danish state. He borrowed 10,000 Danish Kroner from his father’s life insurance, bought an excavator, rented two more and opened a lignite field near Fasterholt in Central Jutland.

The core of our 75-year history is a parallel narrative, in which societys development and Aarsleff’s growth curve are reflected in everything from energy extraction to the construction of coal ports, laying the pipes for district heating, renovation of sewers, casting of bridge piles and the construction of homes and wind farms.

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Towards a greener future

Fast forward to today, where the group has more than 50 companies, 8,000 employees and an annual turnover of DKK 15 billion. DKK. This was only possible thanks to hard work, a bit of luck, but also a strong business sense.

From Aarsleff’s founding until the 2010’s, it was often said that the company only worked below knee height. But not anymore. Today, we also carry out construction – including the tallest residential buildings in Denmark, such as Lighthouse in Aarhus and Pasteur’s Tower in Carlsberg Byen in Copenhagen.

And it is in the showdown with that motto that we find the key to future success. The fact that we seriously began the construction journey only seven years ago says a lot about how Aarsleff will move forward in the coming years, explains CEO Jesper Kristian Jacobsen.

“The employees at Aarsleff have always been innovative and curious and skilled at adopting a new reality. And this at a pace which has contributed to the fact that today we are at the forefront of some of the country’s most complicated construction projects. Readiness for change and agility is in our DNA and is the way forward – especially in our industry,” he says.

Because it is characteristic for the industry that there are currently some rarely seen changes ahead.

“The green transition sets the agenda,” says the director, who points out that tasks with offshore wind farms, climate protection, upgrading the electrical network, new energy infrastructure, power2X facilities and much more.

But only for those companies that are able to adapt to a new, sustainable reality.

“It is our employees who have to take on all the new tasks. And we have to buckle up so that the professionalisation that has to take place in a group like ours with more than 8,000 employees does not end up sucking the oxygen out of the space for the creatives. If we do it properly, we will also be here in 75 and 100 years,” Jesper Kristian Jacobsen says.