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USA - Waupaca Foundry nears finish line on its $100-plus million investment

Issued at 2025-11-17



The world’s largest producer of gray, ductile and austempered ductile iron castings will soon enter the final stage of a multi-year, $100-million-plus investment program to modernize operations, enhance worker safety and advance foundry technology to better serve customers.

Todd Pagel, vice president of operations at Waupaca Foundry, said the final phase of the investment includes a $20-million upgrade to Waupaca’s Plant 4 in Marinette.

“We’re operating at a scale that requires us to pursue these types of investments,” he said. “We deal pretty heavily in the automotive markets, the commercial vehicle markets, agricultural markets, industrial castings and municipal castings.”

Pagel said Waupaca has always had a culture of reinvesting in its foundries and equipment.

“By their nature, foundries use a very heavy, intensive manufacturing process, and many of the processes of equipment involved, just by their nature, tear themselves up as a part of doing their job,” he said. “As a result of that, there is always the investment to keep your equipment in good operating order.”

Pagel said a lot of the reinvestment has focused on automation.

“That’s to reduce the amount of manual material handling and reduce the amount of manual grinding our employees have to do,” he said. “We’ve made investments in automated CNC grinding technology, investments in automated casting cleaning and improving our casting cooling.”

Pagel said many of the investments are aimed at transforming the nature of the work, making it more accessible to a broader range of people.

“In this challenging workforce, automating helps reduce the amount of manpower needed to produce our product,” he said.


Source: thebusinessnews.com



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