Certain key events in the economic expansion of ARBED occurred in the 1990s. In 1990, ARBED jointly acquired Yates, a U.S. company specialising in the production of copper foil, with Japanese group Furukawa Electric. The following year, the Luxembourg company founded TrefilARBED Arkansas (USA), a steelcord plant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 1992, it founded long steel products company "Stahlwerk Thüringen" in Germany. In 1993, ARBED founded ProfilARBED, a subsidiary company specialized in the production of long steel products and ARBED Americas, a subsidiary of TradeARBED, in 1994, to manage all United States commercial activities. ARBED also expanded by taking over other companies; in 1995, it obtained the majority of shares of German "Klöckner Stahl", now "Stahlwerke Bremen", and, in 1997, it developed a strategic partnership with Spanish steel company "Aceralia" (formerly "CSI"). However, during this period of geographic expansion and division of sectors, the remaining Luxembourg blast furnaces gradually stopped operating, the last one, in Belval, definitely halting its operations in 1997.