This Page is for Archived Industry News Shorts - for CURRENT News click here.
Natural Gas Market
(August 30, 2005) - Energy costs make up more than 15% of typical heat treat operating costs and many US heat treats get that energy predominantly from natural gas. In addition, endothermic gas (cracked natural gas) is a dominant source for carburizing atmospheres.
With skyrocketing costs (up well over $1 today) and the recent hurricane impact, natural gas has become a critical issue for maintaining profitability in heat treating operations.
To this end we are adding a graphic to track natural gas futures to our homepage. Like the nickel and aluminum tickers this is updated daily and comes to us courtesy of intelligencepress.com. Be sure to visit them for all your power market intel needs.
In addition we've added two events to the calendar for those of you interested in the gas market:
Marathon Names General Manager for China Subsidiary
Cincinnati, OH (23 August 2005) - Marathon Sensors Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Yakun Liu as the General Manager for its wholly owned subsidiary in China, Marathon Monitors and Control Systems Corporation (Beijing) Ltd. Mr. Liu is responsible for all the daily operation of Marathon-Beijing.
“Yakun Liu built the market for Marathon probes in China as our distributor over the last eleven years and made the Carbonseer the best selling import, establishing Marathon in China as the highest quality sensors and controls for heat treating,” stated Eric S. Boltz, Chairman of Marathon-Beijing and President of Marathon Sensors Inc. “With Liu at the helm, Marathon will continue to grow our Asian business by providing the best products and highest level of service to our customers throughout the Pacific Rim.” Read more »
IPSCO Announces Expansion of Pipe Mill Operations
(LISLE, Ill., Aug. 25) -- IPSCO announced today an expansion to the current oil country tubular goods (OCTG) heat treat capacity at its Calgary, Alberta plant. In addition, the Company announced the increase of its casing product range through modifications to tubular operations at both the Calgary and Regina, Saskatchewan pipe mills.
Overall capacity of the Calgary heat treat facility will be increased by more than 70% annually. The expansion in heat treat capacity will begin immediately and is expected to be fully implemented before year-end. Read more »
Bodycote Interim Results Released
(August 23, 2005) - Bodycote is certainly a reasonable barometer of the heat treat industry in North America and Europe (no real presence in Asia yet) so it's interesting to note that Bodycote released their half-year results today.
Some highlights include:
- Revenue is flat for all operations at £231M, but up if you omit "discontinued" operations from 2004.
- Profit after taxes is up 5% to £20M.
- The balance sheet is down about £20M to £516M.
Overall a strong mid-year report showing improvements in profit & capital. The only weakness I noted in a brief review was a reduction in cash flow.
Probably the most interesting thing I learned is how little North American heat treating is as a portion of Bodycote's revenue. Of £165M in H1 heat treating sales only £54M was from North America!
North America is also less profitable for Bodycote than Europe. Operating profit in North America is 9.7% compared to 14.2% in Europe! This is really astounding since the low dollar is supposed to make things cheaper here. I suppose the EU Bodycotes are either very efficient or focused on more profitable work.
Anyway, a very interesting read. Head on over to Bodycote's Web Site for links to the report and CEO John Hubbard's presentation to investors from earlier today.
Marathon-China Debut Exhibition in Beijing
(August 19, 2005) - We just received this photo from the new Marathon outpost in China. Apparently the Beijing Metals & Metallurgy show is their debut exhibition. We hear they're in temporary accommodations until their building renovations are complete in early September but that they're staffed and selling already. Nice to see US products doing well overseas.
From left to right the members of Marathon-Beijing's sales force are: Mr. Sun - Sales Manager, Mr. Liu - General Manager, Mr. Si - Vice GM, Ms. Xia Liu - Admin Asst., and Mr. Yi - Sales Manager.
Please click the link at the top of the page to send us your company's latest news and photos!
WIRCO Axes Entire Alloy Engineering Rep Force After Acquisition?
(August 17, 2005) - The recent acquisition of Alloy Engineering by WIRCO has been getting lots of play over on Gord's Blog. Now HTN.com reader "fatman" has posted an interesting rumor that WIRCO has fired the entire outside independent sales rep force of their latest acquisition. Obviously this makes some sense as WIRCO can't afford to feed two sets of reps and that's the price of acquisition-based growth. Certainly the good ones will have a new line in no time. If you can confirm or provide details please do by clicking the add comments button below!
SEAHTA Announces South East Asia Heat Treatment Conference 2005 in Ban Na, Thailand, 1-2 November
(August 17, 2005) - Reserve your seats and pack your bags! We're hearing that this year's South East Asia Heat Treatment Conference is attracting lots of attention from Western companies. Rumors have biggies like Solar, Surface and MMI all heading for the tropics this November to pitch their latest R&D activities. Submit your abstracts soon as it looks like there's a Sept. 3rd cut-off date.. For more information click the logo below.
Beijing Metal & Metallurgy Exhibition 2005 Starts Tomorrow
(August 17, 2005) - Okay so we're a little late to get you there in time if you didn't already know about it, but the Beijing Metal and Metallurgy Exhibition 2005 starts tomorrow (18-August) at the China International Exhibition Center in Bejing China. We're sure the biggies of China heat treat will be there - Aichelin-China, Ipsen-China, Fendong and, of course, the new MMI outpost, Marathon-China.
No signs of PowerMax Furnaces where we've heard things have gone slow and quiet these last few months. We'll give a full report from our friends at the show next week and see if there's anything to the rumors of a rift between one of Taiwan's better known heat treat characters and a new partner from the US.
SECO/WARWICK Completes Turnkey Installation of twin Coil Annealers in Ningbo, China
(August 11, 2005) - SECO/WARWICK has recently completed the turnkey installation of two Aluminum Coil Annealing Furnaces for Ningbo Huayang Aluminium-Tech Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of C. S. Aluminium Corporation in their Ningbo, China facility. This installation is C. S. Aluminium’s first aluminum plant on the Chinese mainland. The furnaces heat, soak, and cool loads of aluminum sheet coil. The coils rest on structural steel saddles, which rest on a tray. Each furnace holds one tray with a maximum allowable aluminum plus steel core furnace load weight of 187,400 pounds (85 metric tons). Read more »
(August 7, 2005) - Bodycote Materials Testing Middle East is pleased to announce that on 07th August 2005, an agreement was signed to acquire the Dubai based Cladding Technology and Testing Laboratory Division from GHD Global Pty. The Cladding Technology and Testing Laboratory (formerly part of the Taywood Engineering Group) is the Middle East's leading testing facility for building envelopes including capabilities to test building cladding and curtain wall systems for thermal cycling, dynamic wind loading, water infiltration tests, structural deflection tests, impact tests and acoustic testing. Read more »
Bodycote Materials Testing Acquisition #1: CSM Materialteknik AB
(August 7, 2005) - Bodycote Materials Testing Group is pleased to announce the completion of its acquisition of CSM Materialteknik AB from SAAB AB of Sweden. CSM is Scandinavia’s leading knowledge based company in the fields of applied materials and process technologies and provides testing and consultancy services to the aerospace, defence and power generation industries. The business, which operates from three laboratories in Sweden, is headquartered in Linkoping and employs 105 staff.
The business will trade as Bodycote CSM AB and is a very welcome addition to Bodycote's expanding capabilities in the materials engineering discipline. Bodycote looks forward to the further development of this prestigious laboratory within Bodycote Materials Testing Group.
For further information, please contact Goran Lindstrom, Managing Director
What Will Happen to the Yuan (Chinese RMB) and the U.S. Dollar?
(August 4, 2005) - Forum member "Yvonne" has started a thread to discuss the recent "unpegging" of the Chinese Yuan to the dollar here. The first change dropped the dollar value by about 2%. Many in the U.S. Government have said this is a good first step in normalizing manufacturing costs between the countries, but others warn that an unpegged Yuan could actually hurt the dollar value and the U.S. economy.
What do you think?
New Items in the Buy / Sell / Trade Forum
(August 4, 2005) - Looks like our new commission freebuying and selling forum has got its first listings. David Pye has posted some hardness testers, balances and an inverted microscope. If you've got stuff to sell that heat treaters use its a great place to post it risk free - no listing fee and no commissions ever! Click here for more.
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