NCC Brand Guidelines: The Nordic Construction Company and Its Blue and Yellow Mark

Two Nordstjernan builders under one name.

NCC dates its history to 1875, when Nya Asfalt AB was founded. The company says Nya Asfalt was among the pioneers of asphalt in Sweden and paved Stora Nygatan in Stockholm in 1876, which it describes as the country’s first asphalt street; Swedish Wikipedia gives Nya Asfalt’s founding year as 1875 in one place and 1876 in another. In 1928 Nya Asfalt was bought by the Johnson group of the shipowner and industrialist Axel Ax:son Johnson, which had just built an oil refinery in Nynäshamn, Swedish Wikipedia records. A second Johnson business, Svenska Väg AB, was separated out as a road-building company in 1930.

The two Johnson companies were joined in the early 1980s as Johnson Construction Company, or JCC; Swedish Wikipedia gives 1980 for the decision and 1982 for the new company. The other half of NCC was ABV, Armerad Betong Vägförbättringar, a listed builder. English Wikipedia says Nordstjernan, which already owned JCC, began buying ABV shares in late 1987, held a controlling stake by May 1988, and on 20 September 1988 moved the construction businesses of JCC and ABV into a new company called NCC, the Nordic Construction Company. Its head office went to ABV’s offices in Solna, north of Stockholm, where it remains. The group was legally formed on 1 January 1989.

The name and mark came first. English Wikipedia records that JCC and ABV had worked under a single roof and a shared logo since 15 October 1988, when a joint graphic profile was launched. NCC’s own history says a visual identity was developed in 1988 and that its blue and yellow logo soon appeared on construction sites, machinery and offices across the country. In 1991 Nordstjernan and NCC were merged and NCC shares began trading on the Stockholm stock exchange, Swedish Wikipedia says.

Arenas, tunnels and a twisting tower.

NCC’s history page tells its story through projects, many begun by companies that later joined it. Its Norwegian predecessor Eeg-Henriksen moved the granite block for Gustav Vigeland’s monolith in Oslo’s sculpture park, which was in place in August 1928. The sources used for this guide do not say how Eeg-Henriksen operated during the occupation of 1940–1945. Svenska Väg worked on the concrete motorway between Malmö and Lund, completed in 1954, which the company calls Sweden’s first. SIAB, bought by NCC in 1997, built the curved Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg of 1958.

Under its own name NCC completed the Globen arena in Stockholm, now Avicii Arena, built from 1987 to 1989 by SIAB and ABV, and returned about twenty years later to add the SkyView gondolas on its outside. With Eeg-Henriksen it built Gardermoen Airport outside Oslo in the 1990s; with SIAB it built the Arlanda Express rail link, which the company calls Sweden’s first public-private partnership; and with Danish partners it built the tunnel section of the Öresund Link between Sweden and Denmark from 1995 to 2000. Among its later buildings is Turning Torso in Malmö, Santiago Calatrava’s 54-storey residential tower, built by NCC from 2001 to 2005. Swedish Wikipedia adds the Västlänken rail tunnel stations Centralen and Korsvägen in Gothenburg, the Citytunneln in Malmö and the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

The group works in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, in six business areas that Swedish Wikipedia lists as Building Sweden, Building Nordics, Property Development, Infrastructure, Industry, which paves roads and sells crushed stone and gravel through its Ballast brand, and Green Industry Transformation, set up in 2024. The company describes itself as “one of the leading construction companies in the Nordics.” It launched a programme called Green Tenders in 2010, its history says.

How construction groups present themselves.

Large construction groups present themselves less through products than through places. Their identities usually rest on a strong wordmark, often in a blue, a red or an orange, used across hoardings, site vehicles, workwear and reports, with the group name repeated in the names of its subsidiaries. Eiffage, for example, runs its business lines as Eiffage Construction, Eiffage Route, Eiffage Métal and so on, while Bouygues keeps separate names such as Colas alongside Bouygues Construction.

Photography does much of the work. Group websites tend to alternate pictures of active sites — cranes, tunnel-boring machines, road crews — with finished bridges, stadiums, towers and rail lines, and they organise their pages by activity: infrastructure, buildings, concessions such as motorways and airports, and energy works. Named landmark projects serve as the main proof of capability, from the Channel Tunnel to the Millau Viaduct.

Commitments are presented in a structured way. Groups describe their environmental and social aims through named programmes, plans and reports rather than slogans; Eiffage, for instance, publishes a climate report and a biodiversity action plan alongside its universal registration document. Values pages, codes of ethics and statements on site safety appear as standard sections, written in the language of programmes and targets.

Two other audiences shape these identities. Careers pages address the large numbers of engineers, site managers and trades staff the groups recruit each year, and many groups promote employee shareholding as part of their story. Investors and lenders read the annual and sustainability reports, where the identity system is often applied most completely, in charts, maps and project photographs. This guide sets out what can be checked about each group: who founded it, how it was formed, who owns it, and which projects dated sources connect to its name.

From Nordstjernan’s builder to an OBOS holding.

NCC has changed shape several times. In 1999 it bought Superfos Construction, the Danish asphalt and aggregates business, and merged it with its own Danish subsidiary NCC Rasmussen & Schiøtz, Swedish Wikipedia records. In 2016 its housing business, NCC Housing, was spun off as a separate listed company, Bonava: in May that year Nordstjernan converted part of its NCC shares so that the Bonava shares could be handed to NCC’s shareholders, Nordstjernan announced. Nordstjernan said in 2022 that when its modern history began in 1999, NCC had been its only holding.

Ownership has since moved towards Norway. In December 2022 Nordstjernan announced that OBOS, the Norwegian housing developer and principal owner of the construction groups Veidekke and AF Gruppen, would buy part of its NCC stake, taking 6.5 percent of the capital and 23.1 percent of the votes. Swedish Wikipedia now names OBOS as NCC’s main owner.

The company has also been part of a major competition case. In April 2003, Hallands Nyheter reported, the Swedish Competition Authority filed a suit at the Stockholm district court over the coordination of asphalt bids, naming NCC, Skanska, Peab and the production arm of the national road agency; Swedish Wikipedia records that the authority won in 2009 and that the companies were fined in what became known as the asphalt cartel. On brand, NCC is explicit: its brand page describes a brand platform and portal that set its tone of voice and visual identity, sums up its customer promise as “Make it happen,” and asks partners to apply before using NCC as a reference.

For a design guide, NCC shows how a merger can be made visible within weeks, with a regional name of three letters and a two-colour mark rolled out across sites and machinery. Compare Skanska, its long-standing Swedish rival, and Veidekke, the Norwegian builder that shares its main owner. For this guide we use a harbour blue, a signal yellow and an asphalt grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep NCC’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.