The company that is today Nova Cimnor S.A. has its origins in a post-war co-operative founded in 1947 by the largest representatives of the metalworking industries in the north of Portugal, for the purposes of encouraging and improving quality levels within the industry at that time.


When the company was created, two areas of intervention were decided on:


- One relating to education and the dissemination of the science of metallurgy, which involved the creation of a metalworking library and the production of technical and scientific manuals. As the years passed, Portuguese industry gained a new understanding of educational needs and possibilities, leading the cooperative to widen its scope and help to set up, on its own premises, associations in this sector of industry to whom these educational tasks would be transferred: APF - The Portuguese Foundry Association, CIMAF for machinery and CIMATEX for textile machines.

- Another area of intervention considered of utmost importance was the availability to the Portuguese market of high-quality, certified raw-materials, which were at that time impossible to obtain due to the poor organizational level within the industry. Contact was therefore established with the producers of the best European products, and from that point the Portuguese market was able to obtain suitable materials with greater ease.


Companies throughout Portugal applied to join the co-operative, and were accepted. From this point on, the co-operative was known as CIMNOR.
As a supplier to the Portuguese market, CIMNOR grew and prospered, and it was soon decided that its city-centre headquarters and rented warehouses should be replaced by its own, more suitable buildings in the part of the city best suited to its business. New installations were built, with ample areas and excellent transport connections including motorway links to the whole of Portugal and Galicia, as well as being just a few kilometers away from the Port of Leixões. 


The passing of time has seen changes in Portuguese society and the opening up of international markets, causing some companies to leave the industry and with it, the co-operative. At that point it was decided that it would be best for the co-operative to change to a P.L.C. and, in order not to lose the good name that CIMNOR had in the national and international markets in which it operates, the name NOVA CIMNOR - Companhia Distribuidora de Produtos para a Indústria Metalúrgica e Metalomecânica (NEW CIMNOR – Distribution of Products to the Metallurgical and Mechanical engineering industries) was chosen. 


In more recent times, as a result of new business requests and to enable better usage of the existing premises, the scope of NOVA CIMNOR was widened to include the provision of services to other sectors of industry. In 2004, these changes led to a new name being given to the company: NOVA CIMNOR - Companhia Distribuidora de Produtos para a Indústria, S.A. (NEW CIMNOR – Distribution of products to Industry).