When furnace builder “Aichelin”, one of the largest furnace builders in the world extended an invitation to “The Monty Heat Treat News” to visit their location in Celje, Slovenia Gord Montgomery jumped at the chance and we are glad we did.

Parent company Aichelin Holding is located in Mödling, Austria and historically this is where the bulk of their manufacturing was done. However not that long ago all of the  Mödling manufacturing was moved to “AiIchelin Assembly Center Europe” located in Celje, leaving engineering and a number of other functions at the Austrian facility.

The new facility proved to be a new, modern and very substantial plant with a large enough assembly area to allow for the construction of numerous furnaces at the same time-to give you an idea an almost completed cast link belt line was dwarfed by the size of the building. 

A great deal of thought obviously went into the design of this plant, for instance selected furnaces can be 100% tested at temperature and with atmosphere before shipping. In addition they have a very ingenious system for assembling furnaces which involves pits with adjustable scaffolding which allows for easy access when building and assembling quench tanks and conveyores as an example.

The 50 full time employees are complimented with a number of local contractors as required. This is what we saw on the floor during our visit:

“Cast Link Belt Line”. Almost ready for shipping this 2,200 kg per hour line (almost 5,000 pounds per hour) is destined for a Swedish manufacturer of fasteners-it is gas fired and designed for neutral hardening.

“Two Chamber Sealed Quench Furnace Line”. (For our North American readers we will point out that this would be called a “Batch IQ” line). This electrical heated furnace system destined for an auto parts supplier in Germany, also shown is a standard batch temper furnace. 

“Endothermic Generators”. During our visit we saw two almost completed endothermic generators, one interesting enough is a single retort 4,500 CFH AFC-Holcroft unit. We say interesting because AFC-Holcroft is the US division of Aichelin. 

Our visit took place March 19, 2025 and we thank our hosts Mr. Christian Grosspointner (CEO – AICHELIN Group), Mr. Philipp Krenn (Managing Director – AICHELIN Mödling and AICHELIN Service GmbH), Mr. Marko Klinc (CEO – AICHELIN Assembly Center Europe), Lukasz Krzyzanowsk (Interim Head of Production – AICHELIN Assembly Center Europe) and Mr. Marco Karnthaler (Head of Global Marketing).