Techint is an Argentine conglomerate founded in Milan in 1945 by Italian industrialist Agostino Rocca and headquartered in Milan (Italy) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). As of 2019 the Techint Group is composed of six main companies in the following areas of business: engineering, construction, steel, mining, oil & gas, industrial plants, healthcare. Techint, with its subsidiaries, is the largest steel making company in Argentina. Techint claims to be the world's largest manufacturer of seamless steel tubes, mainly used in the oil industry. History Agostino Rocca, an executive at Ansaldo and later at Dalmine and SIAC (steel and iron industries) founded Compagnia Tecnica Internazionale (Italian for "Technical International Company") in Milan in September 1945, but developed its main activity worldwide. The original company name was changed after to Techint, its abbreviated telex code. The company began providing engineering services to a growing number of clients in Latin America -to where Agostino Rocca had traveled after World War II- and Europe. Construction activities soon followed: the first major Techint Engineering and Construction (E&C) project was a network of large diameter pipelines in Argentina and Brazil. Awarded a contract to build a 1,600 km (1,000 mi) gas pipeline from Comodoro Rivadavia to Buenos Aires in 1949 by President Juan Perón, Techint became a leading government contractor during Perón's ambitious infrastructure program in Argentina. Creating subsidiaries in Brazil (1947), Chile (1951), and Mexico (1954), the company opened its first seamless steel tube plant in Campana, in 1954; in 1969, Techint's Ensenada plant became the only Argentine manufacturer of cold rolled steel. In the 1980s important projects were undertaken in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico, and the company diversified into new fields of activity, building the first nuclear facilities and offshore platforms. In the early 1990s Techint purchased a stake in Argentina's then-leading steel manufacturer, the state-owned SOMISA. A significant part of Techint's core manufacturing strength has since been concentrated in the San Nicolás-Villa Constitución oil-and-steel corridor, where the company is involved in the production of cold rolled steel. In those years, the Techint Group invested in oil and gas blocks in Argentina through exploration and production company Tecpetrol. In Italy, the Techint Group entered the health services sector by building and managing Istituto Clinico Humanitas (ICH), a hospital and medical research institute near Milan. Tenaris, the company under which all the manufacturing and service activities in the steel pipe business are grouped today, went