Heat Treatment Congress (HK) 2019 (Or What we Learned About The Heat Treatment Industry in Europe)

Yesterday (Tuesday October 22, 2019) marked the first day of the 3 day heat treatment exhibition in Cologne, Germany-we at “The Monty” are in attendance and this is what we learned;

• The heat treatment as a whole in Europe is slower these days, certainly not terrible but slower than it has been and certainly slower than North America. The main culprit-a slow down in the auto industry.

• One of the top heat treat furnace salesman in all of Europe is making a change and will be going back to the alloy business. More shortly when the move is actually done.
• We understand that controls company UPC has a new President, we are hoping and praying that tomorrow we will get a chance to meet him, introduce him to the industry and get a photo at the same time.
• The former CEO of a major European furnace builder is branching out on his own and starting his own business. Maybe or maybe not more details to come.
• We have always thought that US based Gleason Products and Germany based Heess pretty much had a lock on the manufacturing of press quench systems. Now we understand that there is another press quench company based in Germany which would appear to be a major player and which looks to be eyeing the North American market with a great deal of attention.

More to come, in the meantime we have these two photos for you. In the first we see Mr. Andreas Fritz of cleaning system company EMO (November 1, we will have an interview with Andreas) and Mr. Shen Li of China based furnace company SAMT (Shanghai Advanced Metallurgical Technology Corporation). The second photo shows furnace builder Rohde which shows yet again that this is a family oriented business. The company is on its second generation and the short guys in the photo are the next generation.​