Dowa Thermotech, Japan/Hightemp Furnaces, India/Meapforni, Italy
Dowa Thermotech. This past week we had the privilege of meeting the new President of Dowa Thermotech Co., Ltd., Mr. Ryuji Tsuji who took over from Mr. Toshiro Sumida a little while back. Dowa Thermotech is part of the Dowa Group of companies which is one of the largest conglomerates in Japan. The Dowa Thermotech division offers commercial heat treating on two continents, Asia and North America and in addition is quite possibly the largest furnace builder in Japan. To describe the scope of the company’s involvement in the heat treating industry would take some time so we will summarize by saying they have multiple heat treating shops in Japan, Thailand, the USA and Mexico and the furnace manufacturing part of the company had installed thousands of furnaces over the years including at least 250 in the USA.
Hightemp Furnaces in India is part of the Dowa Group and is in turn far and away the largest commercial heat treater in the county and also the largest furnace builder. The president, Mr. Gopal Mahadevan can be seen in two of the photos below. We all know about the tremendous manufacturing growth in India-Hightemp is a perfect example as it adds new locations on what seems to be a continuous basis. You can see the new Sanand, India location under construction just 7 months ago.
Meapforni in turn is a furnace builder in Italy who formed a partnership with Dowa a few months ago as we see in this press release; “April 2019 Press Release. If you are a furnace manufacturer in Europe we would imagine that this news item about Japanese furnace builder Dowa Thermotecand Italian furnace manufacturer Italstart/Meapforni will be of a great deal of interest; “Dowa Thermotec Ltd., one of the top Furnace manufacturers and heat treaters globally is pleased to announce that Dowa will be entering the European market to offer their latest state of art cutting edge technologies in the field of heat treating for the European market. The equipment’s offered to the European market will take into account user preferences in terms of makes/ assemblies complying with European standards in terms of furnace operation. This initiative by Dowa will be supported on ground by a new relationship and partner Italstart supported by Italstart subsidiary Meapforni for furnace parts, after sales and maintenance. Technology by Dowa with active support from Italstart on sales and service will offer unmatched quality of service and support. Dowa and Italstart are confident that technically advanced heat treat systems supported by an efficient sales and service support will bridge a long felt need of European customers.”
With this background out of the way we show you two photos which were taken just last week. The one shows the Dowa/Hightemp group at the recent Thermprocess show in Germany, the second shows the Dowa/Hightemp team visiting Meapforni in Italy just a few days ago. In addition to these photos we also include one from the Dowa, Hamda, Japan which we visited a few years ago. All of this serves to remind us about how the worldwide heat treating industry has become a very tight knit group.
Mr. Ryuji Tsuji, President, Dowa Thermotech Co., Ltd., second from right.
Second from left Francesco Pieropan (Meapforni, Italy), third from right, Ryuji Tsuji (Dowa, Japan), second from right, Gopal Mahadevan (Hightemp Furnaces, India)
Dowa Hamda
Sanand Plant