Cherry Valley, ILLINOIS (January 28, 2026) – Ipsen USA entered 2026 by securing the largest equipment order in company history from a long-standing aerospace manufacturer. The multi-system order reflects decades of trust and Ipsen’s proven ability to deliver mission-critical thermal processing solutions at scale.
“Large, repeat orders like this are earned over time,” said Ipsen Global CEO Geoffrey Somary. “They reflect consistent equipment quality, responsive service, and deep process expertise, which are especially critical for customers operating in highly regulated, high-stakes manufacturing environments.”
The historic order follows a strong year for Ipsen, driven by sustained demand across commercial aviation, space launch, defense, medical technology, advanced manufacturing, and energy markets.
In 2025, Ipsen recorded a 45% year-over-year increase in new equipment units sold and achieved the second-highest level of new equipment proposals in company history, reflecting strong demand heading into 2026.
Most new equipment buyers were repeat customers expanding their furnace fleets, citing consistent quality, reliable service, parts availability, and familiarity with Ipsen systems. New customers increasingly sought to bring heat-treatment processes in-house to improve quality control, reduce costs, and shorten delivery timelines, selecting Ipsen for its process knowledge, proven reliability, and long-term support capabilities.
Ipsen’s Quality at Speed initiative guided investments across manufacturing, service, and customer support throughout 2025. Production capacity increased at the Souderton, Pennsylvania, facility through investments in CNC machine tools while maintaining high quality standards. Aftermarket demand also grew significantly, with hot zone and retrofit orders increasing 26% and calibration services rising 48% year over year.
In parallel, Ipsen continued expanding its Service HUB program while investing in advanced training and certification for field service engineers to strengthen technical expertise, response times, and customer support across North America.
Momentum from 2025 has already carried into the new year. In addition to the record-setting order awarded in January, Ipsen continues testing its next-generation furnace operating system, with a targeted launch planned for later in 2026.
(Editors Note; Consarc offers very specialized vacuum furnaces and their offerings would typically not be seen in a commercial heat treat as an example).
“Consarc Corporation, an Inductotherm Group company specializing in custom vacuum and controlled-atmosphere furnaces, has broken ground on a major expansion of its Rancocas, New Jersey, USA, manufacturing facility.
The approximately 3,400 m2 expansion will nearly double the company’s overall manufacturing footprint and includes additional space for heavy fabrication, equipment assembly, testing, and additional offices to support new staff.
Construction of the expanded facility is scheduled for completion in early 2027. Once finished, Consarc anticipates that the increased space will allow the company to immediately scale manufacturing operations in response to what it has referred to as an ‘unprecedented backlog’ of work.
Consarc customers primarily produce advanced materials for the Additive Manufacturing, aerospace, power generation, medical, and nuclear industries, sectors that are projecting historically high demand through the remainder of the decade. In addition, the company’s latest technologies support rare-earth magnet production and the reduction of critical rare-earth elements.
“This expansion reflects the strong momentum of our business, driven by growing demand in the US and across our global customer base,” stated Jai Narayan, Consarc President. “By enhancing our manufacturing capabilities, we are positioning Consarc to build more efficiently, innovate faster, and support the next phase of long-term growth. It’s an exciting milestone for our entire organization.”
Below we have this press release from Applied Thermal Technologies in Warsaw, IN. Applied Thermal ranks 42 on our list of the largest commercial heat treats in North America. (Largest Commercial Heat Treats In North America 2025)
Applied Thermal Technologies, in Warsaw, IN, is proud to announce that it has achieved its fourth consecutive Nadcap Merit Accreditation at the 24-month level, the maximum amount of time granted between audits. This distinction is awarded only to companies that consistently demonstrate exceptional compliance, process control, no major NCRs, and continuous improvement during Nadcap audits.
A 24-month accreditation represents the highest level of confidence Nadcap can place in a heat treating organization and is a direct result of outstanding audit performance. Earning this recognition for the fourth consecutive time underscores Applied Thermal Technologies’ long-standing commitment to quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction.
“This achievement reflects a true total team effort,” said Stevan Bradican (Plant Manager). “From operations and quality to engineering and leadership, every member of our team plays a role in maintaining the standards our customers and Nadcap expect.”
Applied Thermal Technologies Inc. is a metal processing company specializing in bright vacuum heat treating and brazing of stainless steel and exotic alloys. Capabilities also include precipitation hardening, stress relieving and annealing bar stock in air, up to 13 feet long.
Advances in technology have changed the Heat Treatment industry so it should come as no surprise that technology changes have also had a dramatic effect on Heat Treat Industry Advertising.
The days of print advertising in magazines such as “Industrial Heating” are largely behind us and physical mailings through the postal system are but a distant and fading memory.
These older advertising formats were replaced by on-line banner ads and digital magazines and while these advertising options remain very popular we are seeing a new trend in advertising-“in your face” marketing for lack of a better term.
“The Monty Heat Treat News” has seen a dramatic increase in interest for direct, e-mail advertising campaigns-either in the form of “single message” e mails or as part of an e mail message featuring both news items and one or two ads.
The attraction for advertisers is obvious; a lower cost as compared to “print ads” combined with the fact that their message is not getting drowned out by a number of other ads at the same time.
Is there a sales pitch here? Well yes there is as “The Monty” has been offering direct e mail campaigns and “weekly updates” for many years now. However our motives are not entirely altruistic-we genuinely find it interesting how technology keeps changing everything in our lives even including advertising.
Weekly Update Ads; $500 USD
E-Mail Blast to 12,500 Subscribers; $1,750 USD
Ask Jordan Jordan Montgomery for more details [email protected] Phone; 647 200-2000
This week we will have a brand new name on our list of the “15 Largest Captive Heat Treats-North America”–“Dauch Corporation”. You can certainly be forgiven if the name doesn’t ring a bell-previously the company was known as “American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM)” according to this press release;
“DETROIT, Jan. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc. (the “Company”) today announced that on January 23, 2026, the Company changed its name to Dauch Corporation (“Dauch”) by filing an amendment to its Certificate of Incorporation (the “Amendment”) with the Secretary of State of the State of Delaware (the “Name Change”). The Name Change and the Amendment became effective at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on January 26, 2026.”
Where will “Dauch Corp.” be ranked on our list of the “15 Largest Captive Heat Treats-North America”? We will tell you later this week in the meantime we leave you with this summary of the “Dauch” facility in Silao, Mexico;
“Dauch Corporation” (Formerly Axle & Manufacturing Holdings), Silao, Mexico.In 2012 auto parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) formally opened a new plant in the city of Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico. Since that time this facility has grown to encompass roughly 10 different plants, 7 of which offer heat treatment. This posed an issue for “The Monty” in terms of ranking-does this qualify as a single location heat treat? At the end of the day, we decided that as this is one complex it will for our purposes be considered a single location. The amount of heat treating in this complex is staggering, 6 pusher furnaces (2 single row, 2 two row and 2 four row), almost 20 batch IQ units, 36″ X 48″ X 36″, several normalizing lines, two mesh belt carburizing lines and multiple tempering units, washers and endo generators. For sheer throughput in terms of pounds per hour this has to be one of the largest captive heat treats in North America.
“Founded in 1981, “Volunteer Sintered Products” (VSP) is a global provider of custom-engineered powdered metal (PM). Since starting in Lafayette, TN, VSP continuous pursuit of new technologies and capabilities has led to a growing global footprint. VSP has grown its manufacturing operations throughout the Eastern part of the United States and continues to expand in and outside of the country.”
The company has started 2026 off on a very positive note by adding a brand-new mesh belt sintering furnace provided by“Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems”of St Mary’s, PA, USA. The furnace was recently delivered and is expected to enter production shortly. While “Gasbarre” offers a number of different styles of thermal processing systems, we would suggest that when it comes to sintering furnaces there are very few firms in the world that can claim the same level of experience.
The hot topic of conversation amongst many in North America is the record amount of snow and cold temperatures most of the continent is suffering through these days. This photo was taken a few minutes ago in front of the offices of “The Monty Heat Treat News”. In it you can see Gord Montgomery in our parking lot-to put this in perspective Gord is 6′ 1″ tall.
Back in 2016 “The Monty Heat Treat News” had this press release about “Precision Resource”, a supplier of high-volume and high-tonnage fineblanked components and assemblies opening an in-house heat treat facility in Saltillo, Mexico;
“2016 POSTING; Precision Resource is pleased to announce that its Mexico Division has officially opened a heat treat facility in Saltillo.
Heat treating is a specialized process that aids in hardening material to meet customer part strength requirements. While Precision Resource was providing this service using outside suppliers, adding this strategically located facility will help PRMX be more responsive to local demand.
“This new heat treatment facility will use new state of the art furnaces with advanced process control capabilities in order to reduce process variation resulting in the more repeatable performance of our customers’ components” said Kaveh Vafaei, Precision Resource’s Director of International Operations. “Vertically integrating heat treating within our plant in Saltillo, creates a specific opportunity to improve the total quality of our products requiring heat treatment. Being able to fineblank and heat treat in adjacent facilities will create a constant feedback loop in real time in order to improve the overall quality and consistency of our products”.
Located in Saltillo, Coahuila, the Precision Resource Mexico specializes in the supply of high-volume and high-tonnage fineblanked components and assemblies. The division supplies its products primarily to the automotive and heavy-duty markets. The division also employs an array of secondary finishing technologies, including grinding and machining that coupled with heat treating enables them to supply complete ready to assemble component solutions to its customers.
Fineblanking is a high precision metal forming process used extensively in the automotive, heavy duty, electronics, medical, lawn and garden, and general industrial industries. This unique process creates parts with very tight dimensional tolerances, excellent flatness, and with very little variation from part-to-part throughout long production runs. These characteristics lead designers to specify fineblanked components for their most critical applications.
Precision Resource has seven production facilities globally. The company operates plants in Huntington Beach, CA; Shelton, CT; Mt. Sterling, KY; Vernon Hills, IL; Cambridge, Ontario, Hangzhou, China and Saltillo, Mexico as well as a Technical Center in Canada.”
When the heat treat officially opened it had carburizing, and nitro-carburizing capabilities, utilizing two UBC batch furnaces and a continuous belt furnace for efficient high-volume production. Additionally, the firm offers induction hardening across multiple locations. (Editors Note; While the company mentions two UBC batch furnaces we assume they mean UBQ furnaces, a trade name for AFC-Holcroft batch IQ furnaces).
We mention the firm today because we understand that the company is in the process of adding a Can-Eng 1500 pound/hour mesh belt hardening line with automated loading, oil quenching and temper. At this point in time we have few other details to offer beyond the fact that we would expect the line to be up and running later in 2026.
Our previous news item concerned “Precision Resource” adding mesh belt furnace capacity at their location in Saltillo, Mexico so we should at this point mention another new furnace install in Mexico.
One of our almost 10,000 “LinkedIn” followers sent us this photo of a new furnace install in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. While we have very few details about the furnace we do know that it was installed at a “Honeywell” location very recently and the “Gasbarre” designed and built furnace is a mesh belt design most likely doing either sintering or brazing.
As we count down to the 2026 list of the “15 Largest Captive Heat Treaters-North America-2024”(coming the week of January 26th) “The Monty” looks look back at a company which was in the #2 position on our 2024 list of “The Largest”–“GKN ePowertrain Newton, North Carolina”.
“2024 Posting; Largest Captive Heat Treaters in North America- GKN ePowertrain Newton, North Carolina; According to GKN this is the history of this location; “GKN Driveline Newton employs more than 900 people, supporting machining and assembly of high precision products for AWD applications. GKN employs an additional 1,530 employees at companies in other counties across North Carolina; locations include Roxboro, Mebane and Sanford. The Newton location covers roughly 600,000 square feet. In October of 2013, GKN Driveline Newton was awarded the Certificate of Special Recognition Safety Award by North Carolina State Commissioner of Labor Cherie Berry. The award recognizes a North Carolina-based business that achieves 1 million safe employee hours without a lost-time accident.
Established in 1986, the Newton facility was acquired by GKN plc in 2011 when the company purchased Getrag Corp.’s all-wheel drive component business. Other products made at the facility include Trans Axle Solutions (gear sets and housing) as well as eDrive Systems.”
In the early 2000’s the decision was made to go entirely to vacuum carburizing as a replacement for the older rotary hearth furnaces. The end result is that the company now has 39 vacuum carburizing cells in 4 different systems all provided by ECM making then in the opinion of “The Monty Heat Treat News” the second largest single location captive heat treat in North America. While the original investment dates back to the early 2000’s, some of the systems were installed in 2014.
Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” was very warmly greeted last week by Mr. Greg Cook, Heat Treat Maintenance Supervisor and his entire team-perhaps it is the Southern hospitality or perhaps their tremendous pride in their heat treat department, whichever it was the welcome was truly appreciated. These photos show the team and the heat treat department (Greg is in the back row with the tan shirt).”
Applied Thermal Technologies, in Warsaw, IN, is proud to announce that it has achieved its fourth consecutive Nadcap Merit Accreditation at the 24-month level, the maximum amount of time granted between audits. This distinction is awarded only to companies that consistently demonstrate exceptional compliance, process control, no major NCRs, and continuous improvement during Nadcap audits.
