CMW Foundries - Inside Marine

CMW FOUNDRIES

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CMW FOUNDRIES

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PROFILE

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or over 40 years, CMW Foundries has focused and specialised in producing complex and technical sand castings for wear resistance applications either by the effect of abrasion, impact, high temperatures and/or corrosion.

A modern Portuguese foundry group founded in 1981, CMW Foundries was initially called Cruz Martins & Wahl. It has three production plants, two near Porto and one near Lisbon.

The group has become a key reference point for its castings in global markets, including shipbuilding, offshore, dredging, mining and quarrying, cement, valves, petrochemical, general engineering, power, and construction equipment.

Its optimum capacity allows the manufacture and delivery of finished castings in a range of alloys – high chrome white irons, stainless and heat resistant steels, duplex and super duplex, Inconel, carbon steel and austenitic manganese steel.

CMW produces high chrome, carbon/low alloy steel, austenitic manganese steel and heat resistant steel castings up to 8 tonnes, with stainless steel, super duplex, duplex and Inconel alloys up to 3.5 tonnes.

The plants have a total of ten electric induction melting furnaces with capacities ranging from 850kg up to 6,000kg, and one electric arc furnace with a melting capacity of 6,000kg.

The foundry features several moulding lines: two automatic systems, one George Fischer for green sand, an IMF for phenolic alkaline sand, two semi-automatic moulding systems for phenolic alkaline sand (for frames up to 4,000 x 2,000 mm) and two hand moulding lines without moulding size restrictions.

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Metallurgical laboratories, a pattern shop with CNC equipment, a machining shop with lathes up to 3.4m turning diameter, a grinding shop, heat treatment ovens with capacities up to 20,000 kg and different means of air, water and polymer quenching are also on site.

Growing sustainably Commercial Director Manuel Mendes said: “The group has been growing sustainably, investing in equipment, people and infrastructure to serve our markets and meet the demands for highquality standards.

“We keep engineering, pattern-making, production, quality control and machining all under one roof. This creates an efficient process and short communication lines, reflecting our full commitment to ensuring high-quality products and on-time delivery.”

Each plant has a pattern shop and quality control laboratories running. “We apply the most accurate methods to guarantee the quality of our castings, such as solidification simulation, fast prototyping, laser scanning control and non-destructive testing.”

He added: “CMW has maintained a solid financial structure, allowing the company to preserve investments at levels that guarantee the good health of its production equipment and necessary upgrades to comply with environmental standards. All these have enabled us to be at the sector’s forefront, adopting the latest technology and best practices.”

The €16.3 million-turnover company, which employs 210 people, experienced growth of around 15% in 2021. Over 90% of turnover

is derived from export markets, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. Mr Mendes detailed: “Between 15-20% of turnover is derived from the maritime and offshore industry.”

Castings manufactured by CMW Foundries are an integral part of equipment operating in high risk environments for example in energy, maritime, offshore, dredging, pump and valves sectors; industries where it is essential to meet the highest standards of quality and reliability.

To this end, CMW Foundries, in addition to its quality management system in accordance with ISO 9001:2015 and PED 20104/68/EU annex | 4.3 (parts for application to pressure and steam), has obtained special approvals for the maritime and shipbuilding sector of its manufacturing process for castings in cast steel and stainless steel by major entities such as Lloyds Register (LR), DNV-GL, American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and Bureau Veritas (BV). These approvals guarantee the conformity of the production process and quality control with global standards and regulations.

Cycle of investment Mr Mendes noted that in light of the lack of manpower and the difficulty of the finishing work on the castings, CMW began a cycle of investments in 2018 in automation and robotics.

“Huge steps continue to be taken in launching Industry 4.0 technology, which allows decision-makers to know up to the minute how production is evolving and keep track of KPIs and operational efficiency.”

In 2021, CMW invested €1 million to better protect the environment, and further improve health and safety, work conditions, Industry 4.0 upgrades, and storage capacity.

Reflecting on CMW’s business plans for the next few years, Mr Mendes said: “Given the instability we are living with, caused by the pandemic and the Ukraine-Russian conflict, (which has impacted the energy market in a completely unprecedented way), the short-medium term strategy is being adjusted.

“We are increasingly concerned with energy efficiency and environmental sustainability issues and investing in ways to become more autonomous to give more stability to our business and our customers.”

Despite the impact of Covid-19, the company responded proactively to guarantee employee safety and constantly adapted to the pandemic.

“We were even one step ahead of governmental strategies, such as the obligation for all staff to use masks two months ahead of the government’s decision,” said Mr Mendes. “This constant attention to detail allowed us to maintain operations without experiencing major turbulence.”

As much as the foundries are adapting to the demands of the industry and its clients, Mr Mendes said the three biggest challenges facing CMW today are the spiralling energy costs, raw material costs and lack of personnel.

He added: “The latter two were critical in 2021, but have been surpassed by rising energy costs this year. It’s a critical issue, and a fine line between survival and cessation.

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“Many metallurgical companies are already considering reducing activity or limiting workdays to reduce losses. Now more than ever before, an urgent response is needed at European and local government level. It is time for the European Union to wake up and be more supportive and more creative in applying concerted policies to mitigate the impact of these challenging times, particularly in the areas of energy and raw materials to ensure supply, reasonableness in prices and equal access to each state member.”

Mr Mendes said CMW differentiates itself from industry peers through its high versatility and producing parts of various sizes and weights in a wide range of ferrous alloys – up to 8 tonnes depending on the alloy.

“We also conduct all necessary activities in-house, with no need to subcontract other than specific services that are not part of our daily activities, such as quality control by X-ray or surface treatment of pickling. We rely on a network of highly efficient partners located close to our facilities.”

He added: “The success of any business is defined by relationships. Each company stands in the middle of a chain of relationships composed of suppliers and customers, taking raw materials, products and services from one end and adding value to generate profit out the other. This is how CMW relates between all parties and is always focused on maintaining long-term relations.”

Automation and robotics Mr Mendes said that “predicting the business future was not easy in the face of what we are experiencing. We hope the geopolitical and sanitary situations return to normal as soon as possible and we start to see a line of stability. However, our flexibility should allow us to go through these turbulent periods in better conditions when compared with other competitors in the same sector.”

Manuel Mendes Commercial Director

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He added: “Anyhow, a couple of trends will mark our path.

Automation and robotics are a go in terms of investments as the foundry industry is not attractive to Millennials and GenZ-ers.

Increasing the technological component in the foundry will require more qualified staff, including young programmers and computer scientists.”

Another topic of concern is environmental and health and safety rules. He reflected: “The pressure from official entities can be asphyxiating because they do not seem to understand the timings necessary for an industry of this size to adjust procedures and equipment.

“Of course, CMW has worked in compliance with environmental and health and safety regulations since it was born. Production of castings within a sand foundry can create emissions, and environmental awareness is managed in our daily operations to minimise any impact on our surroundings.

“On top of this, to make our manufacturing process as lean as possible, we always seek the circular economy, reusing production consumables as much as possible and minimising waste. It is a metal recycling industry, metal scrap comes in, new castings come out ready to be used.”

Mr Mendes concluded: “Foundries will always be necessary to the industrial world, but we have witnessed in recent years a dangerous relocation of this industry to the East and Asia, with frequent shutdowns or bankruptcy of European foundries.

“Europe is not cherishing its foundries. Not supporting them in the necessary transition, and becoming more dependent on other regions exposes themselves to logistical crises. This is a major threat.” n Inside Marine

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