Furnace Builder in Germany Enters Chapter 11, AFC-Holcroft Receives Furnace Order and Lilia Jasso is the New President of ASM Mexico

Regular readers of “The Monty” will know that for over 20 years now we have prided ourselves on providing the most up to date news in the global heat treatment industry and today we have several interesting items for you, items that in most cases are exclusive to “The Monty”. We start off in Germany today for a rather upsetting item.  In spite of all the trials and tribulations in the world these days most companies in the industry appear to be weathering the storm if not exactly thriving, this takes us to Germany where unfortunately we have run across a company which is struggling. HSH Härtereitechnik in Kranenburg has been servicing the heat treatment industry since 1988 by providing furnace components, service and even building new furnaces, in particular Ipsen style atmosphere furnace and CIEFFE style nitriding furnaces. Unfortunately we have been lead to believe that the company has entered Chapter 11 protection. At its peak this was a fairly good sized company with almost 40 employees.

On the good news side of things we are hearing interesting rumors about Italian furnace builder CIEFFE which we believe is the largest furnace builder in the country. Specifically we are being told that the company will be announcing before the end of the year news about expansion plans-we will keep you updated.  The photo below shows part of the CIEFFE team at the 2018 HK 2019 exhibition in Cologne, Germany.

Now this is real recent news. Late last Friday US furnace builder AFC-Holcroft received an order for a brand new gas fired batch IQ furnace with working dimensions of 36″ X 72″ X 36″. While we aren’t going to tell you the name of the buyer today we can say that they appear on our list of the largest North American commercial heat treaters http://www.themonty.com/project/largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treats-august-2020/

If things went according to plan commercial heat treater Metalex out in Colorado has new owners. This is quite a small commercial shop but over the years the owner Greg Alexander has done a very good job of running it and maintaining a very good reputation in the industry. We understand that the new owners have some experience in heat treating in California. In Mexico we see that Lilia Jasso Administrative Manager at Nitrex Queretaro was recently elected President of the ASM Mexico chapter. In the photo below we see the Nitrex Queretaro Management Team (from left to right) – Manuel Argüelles, Finance Manager; Jorge Ramírez, Quality Manager; Ricardo Vargas, Operations Manager; Lilia Jasso, Administrative Manager; Carlos Llerena, Plant Manager. By the way Lilia’s brother Roberto has worked with Marathon Controls in Mexico for many years, in the second picture below which we at “The Monty” took at the ASM show in Mexico earlier this year Roberto can be seen third from the right.

Down in Texas Klein Tools is pretty proud of the fact that they have no list time injuries in the last 1 million work hours and this included their heat treat department. If you recall back in 2017 the company made a major investment in the heat treat area in the form of 6 batch IQ furnaces from Surface Combustion. “Klein Tools, a family-owned and operated hand tools manufacturer, today announced its Easy Drive manufacturing facility in Mansfield, Texas, achieved one million work hours without a lost-time injury. Reaching the notable safety milestone on July 22, 2020, more than 240 employees across departments in Plastics, Machining and Heat Treat had no work-related illnesses, injuries or accidents involving time away from work since May 2018.”

From L & L Special Furnaces we have this press release; “L&L Special Furnace Co., Inc., has shipped a medium sized high temperature box furnace to a government military defense organization located in the southeastern United States. The furnace is used for military ceramic composite development along with research and development for various other components. The furnace has a working zone of 24” wide by 18” high by 36” deep. The furnace is rated for continuous operating temperatures up to 2500°F / 1371°C.”

And to round things our for today we have this rather interesting photo taken a couple of years back. This is at a Bodycote (commercial heat treating) facility in Wuxi, China. On the far  left you can see Gord Montgomery and on the far right Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty”.

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