Pechiney Historical Archives

Administration centrale de Pechiney. Service des archives (s.d).

The historical archives of Pechiney, now Rio Tinto France, are mainly those of head offices and a number of subsidiaries (some of which are located abroad).
They were deposited before the 1990s and represent a total of around 1 linear km (out of 7.5 kml held in 2024).

A list of these historical holdings is available on request from IHA.

An Overview of The Pechiney Historical Archives

The Archival Division of Revelis-Historical Engineering Agency, a subsidiary of the IHA, was commissioned by Rio Tinto France (RTF, ex Pechiney) to complete the work of identifying the historical collections of Pechiney kept in the central archives of RTF, which it has undertaken since 2020.

Some key figures:

1 linear km of historical archives (out of 8 km preserved in 2022)
38 collections (including the Historical Collection created in the 1960s and 1970s to preserve a set of documents considered essential for the company’s history)
approximately 174 subsidiaries and establishments concerned. In particular:

- The Anonymous Corporation for the Alp Coal Mines (MCA)

- The Camargue Salt Company (Salicam)

- The Maxéville-Studal Workshops for Prefabricated Construction (ACPM Studal)

- The Company for the study and Market Research on Light Bodywork (Carindal).

The goal is to bring these archives to the attention of RTF and interested researchers (historians, sociologists, architects, etc.), to reprocess then to donate or store part of these collections in public archive services (national or regional).

The historical archives of the Universal Company of Acetylene and Electrometallurgy (CUAEM) were thus stored in the of Isère Regional Archives at the beginning of 2022.

Other donations or acquisitions are expected and will be reported on this page.