Development Status and Trends of Large Casting Industry

Since the 1960s, casting industry around the world has developed rapidly, but in the 1980s, the growth rate slowed down. For more than 20 years, large casting production in the United States dropped from 13.88 million tons in 1981 to 11.81 million tons in 2002. In Japan, it also decreased slightly, and in Germany it was essentially flat.

The main reasons for this phenomenon are the slowing down development pace of several pillar industries (automotive, construction, machinery, etc.) in industrialized countries and the competition in other engineering plastics, composites, and ceramics and so on.

In addition, technological progress is one of the reasons for the slowing down output of metal castings. The most typical example is the rapid promotion of continuous casting and rolling process in the steel industry, which made the traditional ingot mold consumption decrease significantly; the improved strength of castings made castings thinner and lighter; the technological advances in the anti-wear, reducing wear and corrosion-resistant materials improved the service life of the castings greatly, which also decreased the quality demand of castings.

China is a developing country. For more than 20 years since the reform and opening up, with the rapid development of automotive, construction, machinery, energy and other major pillar industries, the output of castings increased more than 2 times from 500 million tons in 1981 to 16.26 million tons in 2002, and makes China rank first in the world consecutively since 2000. The output increased more than 10% consecutively in 2001 and 2002, and more than 15% in 2003 and 2004.

However, in terms of the per capita output of castings, Germany is 56kg, the United States and Japan are both 45kg, and China is only 12.5kg; As for labor productivity, the United States and Germany are 45 to 60 tons / person per year, Japan is 60 to 85 tons / person per year, in China, it is only 10 tons / person per year (few units are up to 30 tons / person per year). Thus, China's foundries still have considerable room for development; the output of iron castings is 70% to 80% of the total casting production, which should be further developed.

During the first 30 years of the 21st century, iron production in China is still expected to develop greatly, but when it enters the last half century, the output of castings will also be faced with the slowing growth or even decline phenomenon faced in industrial countries now. Therefore, as a professional iron foundry, Dandong Foundry will focus on improving casting production and the quality of iron castings and reducing energy, raw material consumption at the same time. And strive for survival, development on the basis of improved quality.

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