out the year. “When they shut down a tumbling mill to put the liners in, it may cost $50,000 to $100,000 an hour profit at a gold mine, so when it goes down, it’s critical that we have castings at site in advance,” Fulton said. Trough metallurgical engineering, ME Elecmetal has designed a family of abrasion resistant white irons and a family of pearlitic and martensitic steels that are modified through chemistry and heat treatment by application for increased wear life. “Te alloys we pour can be air, oil and water quenched, giving us the proper microstructures depending on what is required for the application and crush- ing/milling environment,” Fulton said. Te metalcasting giant also found
a way to double up the lining parts so two pieces can be replaced at a time in the mill. “We’ve reduced the number of pieces and the number of picks and shortened our customers’ downtime,” Fulton said. “As you improve the life of the casting through design and chemistry and then
make the pieces as big as you can so they fit inside the mill in fewer pieces, you reduce down time, and it becomes a win-win.”
Faithful Investors Fulton has been with ME Elecmetal
full-time since 1976 when it was a pri- vately held, Minnesota-based company. He has been with the company through mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies, becoming president and COO in 2011. And while he has been with the firm for more than 35 years, it is much changed from the steel business he first joined. Since Elecmetal purchased the North American metalcasting facilities in 2001, annual sales has grown six-fold to approximately $280 million. “Te Elecmetal group is a well- established conglomerate in South America. In my experience, they have been excellent to work with and have continued to make investments since they’ve owned us,” said Fulton, who reports to ME Elecmetal CEO Rolando Medeiros in Chile. “Te busi-
ness has grown considerably.” Now that the multi million-dollar
capital projects at Tempe and Duluth are completed, there’s not much left for the plants to do except hone their capabili- ties, refine their process and churn out as many castings as they can safely make while the mining industry booms. Further capacity expansions in North America would require a new plant to be built—an expensive proposition not likely to be tackled by ME Elecmetal. “We’ve reached our capacity target,”
Fulton said. “We’ll continue to fine tune, but as far as major expansions, we have come as far as it makes busi- ness sense for us to go right now. As the international market grows, it makes better sense to expand there.” For the next couple of years at
least, ME Elecmetal has enough to keep itself busy. “We have a market demand that is
right at our current capacity, perhaps a bit over,” Fulton said. “Barring some sort of disaster, even with China slow- ing down, we see that continuing.”
January 2013 MODERN CASTING | 35
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