Expansion Ahead at Quaker City Castings

Quaker City Castings, a ferrous foundry in Salem, OH, has purchased a 51,000-ft ² building adjacent to its operation. It plans to reorganize its operations by relocating its secondary processes to the building, which will allow it to pursue a more specific expansion to its foundry operation, Quaker City Casting vice president Geoff Korff explained.

QCC melts gray and ductile iron, carbon steel, stainless steel, and various specialty steel alloys and superalloys. Using centrifugal casting for smaller castings (up to 13 in. OD), and sand casting (for large components (up to 12,000 lb), it supplies cast parts for valve and pump manufacturing, power generation systems, heavy construction equipment production, gearmaking, and other markets.

Colfor Manufacturing had occupied the building for cold forging and machining, until late last year. Those operations were consolidated at another Colfor plant in Malvern, OH. Colfor is an American Axle & Manufacturing subsidiary.

Geoff Korff indicated the plant needs some updating, though it is in generally good condition for manufacturing. He noted that it presented an affordable opportunity for Quaker City Castings to expand at a convenient location, without requiring extensive permitting. The foundry will relocate its blasting, grinding, and welding processes there in the coming months, which will create an opening in the foundry building for a sand-reclamation operation. He said that project had been contemplated for a long time, and would proceed once the space is made available.

In its release QCC indicated it plans to expand some “casting processing operations” and quality control systems, too.

“The new space will give us some breathing room, and let us actually expand and not just reconfigure our existing floor plan,” company president Joe Korff said. “We have to do some work on the building before we can move in, but we expect to be bringing equipment and people into the new space within the next 8 to 12 months.”