World-class heat treatment furnaces SECO/WAR

world-Class heat treatment furnaCes

The SECO/WARWICK GROUP, headquartered in Swiebodzin, Poland, is one of the world’s leading producers of heat processing furnaces for metals, both in terms of sales volume and product range. Dariusz Balcerzyk reports.

For more than 25 years, SECO/WARWICK has been revolutionising the global metallurgical industry by providing equipment and technology to leading companies in the aerospace, automotive and power industries.

The company was founded in 1991 and in 2003 it took over the ELTERMA SA enterprise. Subsequently, in 2006, a reverse acquisition of the mother company took place, as a result of which the main headquarters of the group were transferred to Poland. One year later, the company was launched on the stock exchange and in 2013 the SECO/WARWICK SA Holding, with the entirety of the operational arm located in SECO/WARWICK Europe, was separated.

“From the very beginning, the company philosophy was based on product and technology development to meet the high expectations of our customers, i.e. top tier organisations from the automotive, aerospace and energy industries. Thanks to our technological solutions that are constantly being developed and improved, our customers are able to apply state-of-the-art materials by virtue of which they gain a competitive edge,” says Pawel Wyrzykowski, SECO/WARWICK CEO.

The gateway to the future

The SECO/WARWICK Group’s activities include the production of five main product groups: vacuum furnaces, aluminium heat exchanger brazing systems, aluminium heat treatment systems, atmospheric furnaces and vacuum metallurgy furnaces. The group is one of the technological leaders in its field. Thanks to its state-of-the-art R&D division equipped with a metallography laboratory, and cooperation with the leading academic centres in Poland and around the world, it is able to provide innovative solutions not offered anywhere else in the world.

The company is also involved in a project for the industrial production of graphene, a unique material some refer to as a ‘gateway to the future’. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon in the form of a twodimensional, atomic-scale, honeycomb lattice, in which one atom forms each vertex. Graphene has many exceptional properties: it is about 100 times stronger than the strongest steel, conducts heat and electricity efficiently and is nearly transparent. The graphene obtained by using SECO/WARWICK’s SuperCarb® solution is a product with a wide range of applications. The group has also developed a manufacturing technology for the functional nanocomposite GRAPH ROLL, based on polycrystalline graphene and intended for reversible hydrogen storage. It can revolutionise the automotive industry, since GRAPH ROLL allows for the possibility of safe storage of large quantities of hydrogen, which is used to propel the experimental cars of the future. Strong, international group

The SECO/WARWICK Group is currently made up of five manufacturing companies and subsidiaries located in 10 countries, the leader of which is SECO/WARWICK SA, based in Swiebodzin, Poland. The group has its production facilities in Poland, the USA (two factories, in California and Pennsylvania), India and China. In addition, the group includes a number of service and sales offices in such countries as Germany, Russia and France.

The other main companies in the group are: SECO/WARWICK Corporation (USA, wholly-owned), Retech Systems LLC (USA, wholly-owned), SECO/WARWICK Retech Thermal Equipment Manufacturing Tianjin Co., Ltd (China, 93 per cent of the capital), SECO/ WARWICK Germany GmbH (Germany, wholly-owned), SECO/WARWICK Allied Pvt. Ltd. (India, 98 per cent of the capital), SECO/WARWICK France (France, wholly-owned), SECO/WARWICK Services

(Poland, wholly-owned), OOO SCT (Russia, 50 per cent of the capital), SECO/WARWICK RUS (Russia, wholly-owned), SECO/VACUUM TECHNOLOGIES LLC (USA, wholly-owned), SECO/WARWICK Systems & Services (India) Private Limited (India, wholly-owned).

The group sells its products in 70 countries around the world. Some of the main market segments in which SECO/WARWICK’s products are present are the automotive industry, aviation, and the machinery, equipment and aluminium metallurgy sectors. With more than 4000 solutions in total, SECO/WARWICK’s customers produce, among others, control system components, gears, landing systems for aircrafts, turbines, aircraft engine elements, heat exchangers in aircrafts and automobiles, surgical instruments and coins. The group’s wide range of customers include such industrial giants as Bosch, Siemens, Valeo, General Electric, Honeywell, Ford, Volkswagen and Rolls-Royce.

The solutions offered by SECO/WARWICK are universal, because they are based on best practices for failure prevention in the best sense of the word. In order to raise the service reliability of its customers’ equipment, the group offers comprehensive support services, including preventive inspections and the subsequent preventive measures using advanced tools in the fields of metering and reporting.

For years the group has gathered around itself a circle of trusted business partners. It cooperates with both large, international corporations and small, local companies. Such a strategy has translated into successes and business opportunities for all sides. Some good examples of successful cooperations include the long and fruitful partnership with Daniels Fans, a leading manufacturer of high temperature fans, with thousands supplied to furnace manufacturers worldwide; Guenther Polska, a member of the Günther GmbH Group, which manufactures temperature probes for various industrial applications; Radam, a distributor of high-quality cable and cable sheaths; and Solid Logistics, a worldwide logistics operator. n