Waupaca铸造 Plays Large Role in Local Economy

Auto sales are set for their best year since 2007, and factories such as the Waupaca铸造 plant in Etowah, 田纳西州正赶上潮水.

After idling the plant in early 2010 during the Great Recession and then restarting it in mid-2011, the Waupaca factory has ramped up to 432 employees now and more hiring is expected through the end of 2013.

"We’ve bounced back strong,” says Sam Greene, the plant’s manager.

格林说 the company spent about $38 million expanding the plant and getting it back up to speed producing iron castings for brake rotors, 鼓, calipers and differential cases for autos and trucks.

Located in North Etowah 工业 Park just off U.S. Highway 411 about 65 miles northeast of Chattanooga, the plant is part of a company that bills itself as the largest iron castings producer worldwide with six plants in the United States.

萨拉·鲍姆加特:蒂姆, a marketing analyst for Wisconsin-based Waupaca铸造, 打趣地说，“如果它阻止了什么。, there’s a good chance it comes from [Waupaca].”

在广袤的, dark gray Etowah plant’s production is about a 50/50 split between castings for light cars and trucks and commercial vehicles such as tractor-trailers.

内部, the foundry is a complex hive of people, 机器人, and assembly lines amid the white-hot melting of scrap iron and pouring of molten metal to make new castings.

Greene said the plant has about three days’ worth of scrap iron on hand at any one time as its raw material.

“We move a lot of metal by truck and rail,” he says.
格林说 the plant operates 24 hours a day for 12 days, and it’s then shut down for two for maintenance. He estimates the plant produces roughly 150,000 pieces a day.

美国.S. auto industry’s outlook is as bright today as it has been since 2008, figures show. Experts say sales of new cars and trucks could reach 15.2013年达到500万美元, which is the highest level since the severe economic downturn crushed the American economy.

From January through May, automakers and parts companies hired 8,000 workers. While that’s a relatively slow rate, the pace is picking up. The Center for 汽车 Research expects the industry to add 35,全年增加了000人, 据美联社报道.

克莱斯勒集团有限责任公司、本田汽车有限公司.,
通用汽车公司.、奔驰和
福特汽车公司. plan to add more than 13,000 people this year. In addition, large parts companies such as Lear, BorgWarner Inc. 和天合汽车控股有限公司. are hiring at factories and research centers.

WAUPACA’S CUSTOMERS are some of the biggest in the sector, including TRW, John Deere, and Aisin. 据蒂姆斯说, Waupaca products can be found in vehicles assembled by practically every automaker.

“Not Tesla,” she says about the small, niche carmaker.

Waupaca is owned by New York private equity group KPS Capital Partners LP. In 2012, KPS added to its growing 汽车 business by buying the U.S. subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp AG, including the East Tennessee foundry. Etowah铸造厂建于2001年.

The company’s production jumped 75 percent from 2009 when Waupaca produced under 800,000吨到1吨左右.4 million tons of production last year.

格林说 the Etowah plant can melt 100 tons per hour of gray iron, 或者每小时80吨的球墨铸铁. 在铸造能力方面, 这家工厂能生产120台,000 tons annually of gray iron and 80,000吨延展性.

格林说 the type of iron has to due with rigidity. Ductile iron approaches steel in strength and is useful in drive-train applications such as crankshafts.

Company officials see growing demand for their products. Globally, ductile demand exceeded capacity in 2012. The demand for gray iron is expected to exceed production capacity this year.

同时, global competition is increasing from locations such as China and India, 格林说. For Waupaca, that means working smarter and more efficiently, he says.

“It’s a continual improvement effort,” the plant manager says. “你必须不断变得更好.”

He says the company essentially does its own training of employees offering what he termed a “Foundry 101 course.”也, 格林说, it gives workers an opportunity to grow and bid for better jobs so they can come up through the ranks.

个职员, 9 percent of its employees have 25 or more years of service and 42 percent have put in between 10 and 24 years, 据沃帕卡说.

环境, the Etowah plant tries to recycle byproducts such as slag and sand rather than landfill them.

铸造渣, similar to crushed stone and left over from the melting process, is provided to a local utility as backfill for its pipeline installation and repair projects, 根据沃帕卡.

Over 600 tons of foundry slag has been kept out of landfills thanks to local utility use, 该公司表示.

另外, 150 tons of foundry sand is put to earth-friendly use every month as cattle herd bedding, 沃帕卡官员说. When it’s time to change the bedding, the fertilizer-rich sand is tilled into the soil to improve farm fields, 产生更好的牧场.