Industry News

AFS Corporate Member Waukesha Foundry was presented with a 2022 Energy Efficiency Excellence Award after completing upgrades to its facility and processes to make the 110-year-old foundry more energy efficient.

The award is from Focus on Energy, a statewide energy efficiency and renewable resource program funded by Wisconsin’s investor-owned energy utilities and participating municipal and electric cooperative utilities. The group works with eligible residents and businesses to install energy efficiencies and renewable products, according to a press release.

The Advanced Casting Research Center (ACRC) located at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) announced its first affiliated branch at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. This affiliation will provide members and industry with expanded research capabilities, facilities and resources, and geographic impact in metalcasting and digital manufacturing.

AFS Corporate Member ASK Chemicals celebrated the opening of its new production facility in El Carmen near Monterrey, Mexico. The new site will produce high-performance binders and coatings for the Mexican market.

The site will be brought gradually into operation starting with the production of high-performing binders. The coatings production will follow in the coming months.

AFS Corporate Member Norican Group, home to DISA, ItalPresseGauss, StrikoWestofen, and Wheelabrator, has acquired U.S.-based Simpson Technologies, an AFS Corporate Member that makes equipment for the mixing, dosing, handling, reclamation, and analysis of sand. The 110-year-old family business is based in Aurora, Illinois, and has subsidiaries in Germany and India. It has a significant footprint in both foundry and chemical process industries.

Wisconsin-based Winsert, a global advanced manufacturer of critical metal parts for Fortune 500 OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, has acquired Alloy Cast Products, Inc. (ACP), an investment casting and machining manufacturer of exotic cobalt alloys headquartered in Kenilworth, New Jersey. 

Rolls-Royce has completed a major investment in its Pascagoula, Mississippi, site that will provide increased capabilities and capacity to support U.S. Navy programs.

A new 26,000 sq.-ft. facility, with foundry and machining equipment provided by a U.S. Department of Defense DPA Title III grant, will increase the AFS Corporate Member company’s ability to manufacture propellers and propulsor components for naval platforms.

Sinto America and Purdue University have finalized plans for integrating a Smart Foundry for Purdue’s “Smart Manufacturing” curriculum.  The Smart Foundry classroom, comprising a fully functioning, production-capable, green sand foundry, will be located on the ground level of the new “Gateway” building in the heart Purdue’s campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. It will be a standalone metals processing laboratory fully integrated with the “Sinto Smart Foundry” solutions. 

Rio Tinto is investing $29 million to build a new aluminum recycling facility at its Arvida plant in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, to expand its offering of low-carbon aluminum solutions for customers in the automotive, packaging and construction markets. 

 The facility will make Rio Tinto the first primary aluminum producer in North America to incorporate recycled post-consumer aluminum into aluminum alloys. 

Yamaha Precision Propellers Inc. (YPPI) completed a new, greenfield investment casting plant in March, 2021, among the cornfields of Greenfield, Indiana, about 30 minutes east of Indianapolis. This rare opening of a new “lost wax” facility to manufacture over two dozen types of stainless steel propellers is only the first coat on a range of innovations inside the $20-million, 55,000-sq.-ft. foundry. 

On September 9, Fort Wayne, Indiana-based MetalX completed the transaction to acquire the assets and business of secondary aluminum melter SRT Aluminum in Wabash, Indiana, now operating as MetalX Aluminum Conversion LLC (MAC).

David Currence has been named plant manager of MAC and will be responsible for leading the company’s efforts to refine operating performance and increase capacity. Joe Rosengarten, former SRT chief operating officer, joins the MetalX commercial team as a vice president. More than 120 SRT employees have been retained by MAC.