Re-defining engine cooling TitanX

RE-DEFINING

ENGINE COOLING

TitanX is a world leader in the design and manufacture of advanced cooling systems for commercial vehicles and industrial diesel engines. Philip Yorke talked to Stefan Nordström the company’s CEO, about its dynamic expansion strategy and latest high-tech cooling solutions.

TitanX is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is a leading global supplier of diesel engine cooling solutions for trucks, buses, off-highway equipment and industrial diesel engines. The company was formerly owned by the French automotive group ‘Valeo’ and was acquired by the Swedish private equity group, ‘EQT’ in 2008. The company has two plants in Sweden, one plant in the US and another newly started state-of-the-art facility in Brazil. In addition, new high-tech plants are currently being constructed in China and Mexico and these are planned to come on stream by 2015.

Today TitanX produces a wide range of highly engineered heat exchangers, which are sold as single components or assembled in modules to meet the individual specifications of its big OEM customers. The company’s diverse product range includes frame-mounted radiators, ‘charge’ air coolers and condensers, as well as engine or transmission-mounted oil coolers.

TitanX is unique in that it is the only manufacturer that focuses exclusively on the commercial vehicle market and depends primarily on the growing global market for heavy trucks. The long-term outlook for this market sector remains positive and is supported by the high average age of current truck fleets, as well as a growing demand for commercial transport in the world’s expanding economies. In 2013 TitanX recorded sales of more than €150 million and currently employs over 800 people worldwide.

Innovation and investment driving sales

Since TitanX was acquired by EQT in 2008, during the onset of the global recession, the company has been able to not only weather the economic storm, but has demonstrated consistent growth. When the new CEO, Stefan Nordström, who had gained top executive experience with major global commercial vehicle companies such as Volvo and leading power companies such as ABB, came onboard in August of 2010, TitanX started the work with transforming its three factories into one company. This meant the company centralised all its main business functions such as R&D, sales and marketing but also rationalised its operating procedures and centralised its key support functions. This impetus was further enhanced in 2013 with a changed operating model and the appointment of a new Group Executive Committee.

Constant innovation is at the heart of TitanX’s remarkable success story and its technological leadership is based upon the company’s passion for efficiency and care of the environment. It is well known that for many years the various ‘fluid loops’ have been designed independently, which has led to cooling systems that were not optimized, thus leading to system inefficiency and increased fuel consumption.

With TitanX’s ‘Optimal Cooling’ solutions the company looks at the thermal management of the power-train as a whole, to create components that work together to optimise heat extraction. This advanced technology increases component durability whilst reducing the vehicle’s carbon footprint, the size of heat-exchange components and overall operating costs.

Zakład Metalurgiczny „WSK Rzeszów” Ltd. – Company with over 60 years of tradition in foundry branch and machining. Almost 90% of the company’s revenue comes form export as its products are being sold to the most demanding world markets in Europe and North America.

Customers of ZM „WSK Rzeszów” Ltd. are world leaders of: • automotive industry (VALEO, TITANX), • power transmission and distribution (ABB, SIEMENS), • railway industry (GENERAL ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION), • machine industry (BITZER), • tractors and agriculture machines production (SAME DEUTZ-FAHR, ARGO TRACTORS).

ZM „WSK Rzeszów” Ltd. has Aluminum Foundry, Iron Foundry, Machine Shop with Die & Pat-tern Department equipped with several dozen of CNC machining centers. Company has its own design office and laboratory.

ZM offers wide range of castings and machined components of highest diffi culty level and parameters.

The company’s quality is proved with ISO 9001 and ISO/TS16949 certificates.

ZAKŁAD METALURGICZNY “WSK RZESZÓW” Sp. z o.o. 35-021 RZESZÓW, UL. HETMAŃSKA 120, POLAND Tel: +48 17 717 2800 E-mail: marketing@zmwskrz.com Web: www.zmwskrz.com

Nordström said, “Our main focus is on the development of advanced cooling systems for heavy and medium-duty trucks as well as for buses and diesel engines designed for the world’s power-producing utilities. Going forward our strategy is to grow globally with our key customer’s such as Daimler, Volvo and Scania and to consistently increase fuel efficiency by developing advanced engine and oil cooling systems to meet the growing demands for cleaner and leaner engines. Harmonisation in terms of environmental standards is taking place even in the emerging economies such as South America where legislation today is equal to ‘Euro 5’, whilst in China they are already at ‘Euro 4’ stage. In Japan standards’ development is closer to the development of the NA legislation.

Nordström added, “Innovation is a key driver for sales as is our ability to provide an unrivalled service for our customers. This has meant investing in new plants, close to our clients’ facilities in the world’s emerging markets. Today, given a normal market development, we anticipate growth of more than 40 per cent over the next three to four years and this will also give us a market share in the Western World (Europe, North and South America) of over 30 per cent. As a result of the world recession, operators have been unable to replace their ageing vehicles after the usual 5-6 years of service, which has resulted in a surge in demand for new vehicles as the world comes out of the longest recession in history. In addition, the development of the Asian truck markets create a demand for more advanced engine and oil cooling technologies.

“The next step in emission regulations starting in North America and Europe from around 2020 will for the first time include targets on CO2-reductions which means a clear link to overall reduction of fuel consumption. This in its turn means increased demand for advanced heat exchange solutions as customers are seeking solutions for e.g. Waste Heat Recovery (WHR). Apart from application engineering, we are therefore also developing purpose-built systems and are driving forward advanced engineering options to develop radical, new heat-exchanger solutions within e.g. the field of WHR.

On-going expansion programme

In December 2013 TitanX made the strategic decision to expand its global industrial footprint to include China and Mexico and this decision was backed by a strong order book. The new state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities are scheduled to become fully operational by the second quarter of 2015.

China is the world’s largest market and the new factory will provide attractive growth opportunities over the long term for TitanX. In North America the combination of the company’s new factory in Mexico and its existing plant in Jamestown, USA, adds further impetus to its growth potential by enabling TitanX to serve different commercial vehicle OEMs in the most efficient way.

The future for TitanX looks positive with our order books looking very strong indeed. For example, we are ‘home-free’ when it comes to the advance orders for our new plants in China, Brazil and Mexico. Furthermore, we are attracting new business opportunities from the indigenous commercial vehicle manufacturers in these growing global markets. Long-term our efforts within Advanced Engineering also look very promising”. n

For further details of TitanX’s innovative products and services visit: www.titanx.com