Waupaca Foundry Inc.
Waupaca Foundry, a Hitachi Metals group company, is the leading supplier of gray iron and ductile castings to the global automotive, commercial vehicle, agriculture, construction, and industrial markets. Of the raw metal material melted to produce new iron castings, 93% comes from recycled scrap metal. In addition, about 70% of all process byproducts (including spent foundry sand and slag) generated by our foundries are repurposed for beneficial reuse, such as road beds, general construction, agriculture and geotechnical fill.
In 2010, Waupaca Foundry committed to the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings program to reduce our energy intensity by 25% by the year 2020. At the end of the 2015 reporting year, our intensity reduction stood at 16.3% (or 1.3% ahead of target). Our results were driven by a multitude of initiatives across all six of our plants, including:
• Improved melt efficiency and coke use.
• Waste heat recovery from several sources, including the exhaust from our cupolas, compressor heat rejection and recycling of exhaust air of some of our baghouses.
• Compressor replacements and compressed air system upgrades and controllers.
• Lighting retrofits using available state of the art lighting within manufacturing facilities.
In recognition of the fact that energy intensity improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, Waupaca Foundry has also begun pursuing ISO 50001 certification at one of our plants as a demonstration pilot, with the remainder of our facilities to follow shortly thereafter.