AN IDEAL PARTNER FOR CAST IRON AND BRONZE Omco (Overmeyer Mould Corporation) Metals, located in Hamme in Belgium, offers its customers maximum flexibility and delivers a wide-ranging offer of cast iron and bronze metals. Piotr Sadowski reports.
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ack in 1964, Omco, as a leading producer of glass moulds in the USA, founded a division in Aalter in Belgium, in order to improve the company’s market position in Europe. The glass moulds were made from specially alloyed cast iron and bronze. Omco did not, at that time, own a foundry, so the rough castings were made by third parties. However, in the early 1970s the need for castings became so high that it was decided to establish its own foundry. In 1971 the foundry belonging to the company Bekaert in Hamme, only nine months old at the time, became available for sale and was 192 Industry Europe
immediately bought. Since then castings for both the glass industry and general engineering have been produced there. In 1984 Omco found itself in financial difficulties and decided to sell off its European division, Omco NV. This was done by a management buy-out, carried out by the Regional Investment of Flanders, together with the Seyntex Group. From then on Omco NV became a Belgian company. In 1990, after 19 years of the foundry’s operations, the facility proved to be technologically out-of-date and therefore a brand new foundry was introduced. A year later Omco
NV merged with BMT NV and became a publicly traded company. In 2000 a second foundry was acquired, in Slovenia, and from then on the glass moulds for the division in Croatia and Austria have been produced there, while the foundry in Hamme has been increasingly focused on customers outside of the group.
Activities today Luc Willems, the Hamme foundry manager, explains that while 10 years ago Omco Metals was operating as a local foundry, with around 60–80 per cent of products distributed locally
