Metalcaster of the Year: U.S. Pipe Turns on Tradition


U.S. Pipe engineered a new kind of ductile iron pipe facility and now is taking the plant to even greater heights.


Shea Gibbs, Senior Editor T


he major players in the duc- tile iron pipe casting industry make products that go into the ground for more than a half century. So it’s an appropriate


coincidence that for more than 50 years, not a single new ductile iron pipe cast- ing plant was engineered on U.S. soil.


But when U.S. Pipe, Birmingham,


Ala., fi nally completed a new auto- mated ductile iron pipe manufacturing operation in September 2008, it stepped outside of 100 years of tradition. “We adopted to the iron pipe indus-


try a model we saw become tremen- dously successful in the steel industry,”


said U.S. Pipe President Roy Torok. The steel plants he’s referring to are designed to run fewer part numbers than their predecessors, and they offer another signifi cant break from tradi- tional steelmaking facilities—they rely on a highly fl exible workforce capable of performing a variety of jobs.


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MODERN CASTING / July 2010


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