WHERE PROCESSPERFORMANCE AND PRECISION MEET SHB is a leading European foundry that specialises in casting high quality, complex steel components. Philip Yorke talked to Alexander Grosshaeuser, the company’s managing director, about its strategy to produce heavier and more complex castings and its move into new market sectors.
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HB Stahl-und Hartgusswerk Bösdorf is part of the Swiss DIHAG Group, which is one of the largest foundry groups in Europe and one that produces superior castings for a wide range of industrial applications and markets. SHB was founded in 1894 and began as a local steel dealer in Leipzig, Germany. However, it wasn’t until the turn of the century that
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the company began producing its first high quality steel castings in Bösdorf. In 1984 the foundry relocated to the today location in to take advantage of the boom in coal mining, which was a major consumer of heavy steel components for the mining industry. The SHB Stahl-und Hartgusswerk Bösdorf foundry complex is one of the largest of its kind in Europe and covers more than
55,000 square metres. Today the company employs over 250 people and in 2012 recordes sales of over €42 million.
Optimising the solidification process SHB uses specially developed software to simulate its casting operations which enable it to fully optimise its entire solidification process, even before the initial casting