High quality and perfect precision at Gienanth

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At Gienanth, the jobbing foundry business is divided into two lines: 1) hand moulded castings with an annual capacity of approximately 28,000 tonnes, and 2) machine moulded castings to the very selective and highly demanding automotive industry, producing approximately 78,000 tonnes per year.

Our Partnership

Gienanth GmbH is an iron foundry that held its 275th anniversary in 2010. Through many years, it has produced castings with state-of-the-art manufacturing technology and all the expertise needed. Today, its production capacity exceeds 100,000 tonnes per year of high quality parts for a very demanding market, namely the global automotive industry. DISA has been a strategic partner since 1964, the year that marked the beginning of Gienanth’s large-scale production for the automotive sector.

Company Profile

“We are one of the biggest suppliers worldwide to the automotive industry, and when it comes to our machine moulded castings, our close cooperation with DISA started in 1964 when we installed our first DISA vertical moulding line in order to meet the requirements of a very demanding client base”, explains Guido Siebecker, manager of technical planning at Gienanth.

Challenges, Solution and Results

The vertical moulding expert worldwide

Since the 1960s, Gienanth has been through multiple business phases with foundries in various markets in both Europe and the US; however, always with DISA as its partner:

“In the period from 1992 to 2007, when we belonged to the Auburn foundry group, we ran 14 DISA lines in our plants in the United States, and – irrespective of the market we have operated in – we have always considered DISA a complete supplier of foundry equipment where you can get anything and everything.

Although we have increased our DISA production over the years, we still have a solid hand moulding business as well. But it goes without saying that our business with DISA continues to grow, because it is the main player in vertical moulding machines worldwide.

As an illustrative example, I can say that Gienanth also had horizontal machines installed for the production of brake drums for lorries in the 1980’s and 90’s. However, it was not the right business for us, and when we took that product line off the market, we installed more DISA lines”, Siebecker says.

Taking customer expectations to a new level

Currently, Gienanth operates a total of five DISA flaskless moulding machines with vertically parted moulds: 2 x DISA 230-B, 1 x DISA 2013 MK-4-A, 1 x DISA 2013 MK-5-B and 1 x DISA 231-Y.

“DISA has such a profound vertical moulding expertise worldwide that it is very difficult to talk about real alternatives and real competitors. Their experienced staff and internal specialists know every corner of their equipment and technology portfolio”, says Guido Siebecker, manager of technical planning at Gienanth.

Delivering above and beyond

Additionally, Gienanth enjoys partnering with a complete foundry supplier, to whom it has always been a top priority to live up to promises made – and preferably to go beyond.

“Having been in the foundry business for so many years, I find it safe to say that times have changed. Making it in the business has become increasingly difficult, competition has grown fiercer as globalization has grown stronger, and also some of the people in the overall industry are different.”

“One thing has remained the same, however. DISA has more than fulfilled its promises to us in terms of both delivery times and quality output. We have never had a late delivery. Nor have we ever had a problem that made us unable to run after installation. All key dates have been held, and apart from the fine-tuning that inevitably follows every type of technology upgrade or installation of new equipment, we have always been able to carry on our production”, Siebecker adds before finishing:

“We were promised 510 moulds per hour before purchasing the DISA 230. Today, we are able to run some of our products up to 600 high quality, precision moulds per hour on that machine alone”.