Celebrating 75 years of improvement
11 April 1949 was the official starting point of our aluminium foundry, Hittech Gieterij Nunspeet, and last week, we celebrated their 75th anniversary. “It is quite something that after 75 years, we are still one of the top companies in Europe within the foundry world”, says Ruud Kleijn, the new managing director of Hittech Gieterij Nunspeet.
In the photo, he is the person on the left showing new products to his colleagues Sonja van der Voort (Managing Director of Hittech Landes), Frans Hoffmans (Managing Director of Hittech Multin), and Cor Heijwegen (one of the founders of Hittech Group).
Ruud is excited about introducing digitalisation: “In engineering, digitalisation is rising using advanced casting simulation software. Substantial progress has also been made in the quality department. Not only is it now possible to measure the melt quality digitally and use this to bring it within the required specifications, but castings can also be checked using lasers and automatic 3D measuring machines in addition to an X-ray spectrograph. This makes measuring, checking, and, if necessary, adjusting the process much faster and more accurate than in the past, when these things had to be done mainly by hand. Looking ahead, our focus remains on mechanisation, digitalisation, and automation. We are committed to producing castings faster, more efficiently, more ergonomically, and even more accurately, paving the way for an exciting future.”
We asked Ruud to tell us a bit more about the foundry's 75-year history. Ruud: “Actually, we go back much further than that. In 1876, a new iron foundry was built in Vaassen. Besides manufacturing products from cast iron, it also produced tin foil. After the First World War, they saw a big market for aluminium castings and invested in moulding, drilling, and milling machines to finish them. This mechanised production method proved so profitable that the number of injection moulding machines quickly increased. In the 80s, mechanised core casting machines were introduced. In 1989, a new hall was added in Nunspeet, and the heat treatment furnace from Vaassen was replaced by a new Elino annealing furnace in 1990 (a second Elino annealing furnace was added in 1997).”
In the 1990s, the Nunspeet foundry was part of Hoogovens' HIT division, which stood for Hoogovens Industriële Toelevering (Hoogovens Industrial Supply). When the automotive industry fell on hard times due to a recession in the early 1990s, this caused problems for Hoogovens and some companies within the HIT division. Three private equity firms and the management took over about half of the HIT division. In 1994, a new, independent HIT Group was created with several companies, of which Gieterij Nunspeet was one. In 2004, part of the HIT Group became further independent and was renamed Hittech Group. From then on, Gieterij Nunspeet was called Hittech Gieterij Nunspeet.
