Comfort Kills Our Industry

Casting has been around for more than 5,000 years. Imagine that, around a thousand years ago, we decided that kings, knights, and the church were our customers. We knew how to melt metal, cast, and exactly what they wanted. So why bother looking for anybody else?

That sounds ridiculous. But sometimes I feel this is exactly how large parts of the die-casting industry behave today. Our kings and popes are just the automotive OEMs.

Automotive made us Comfortable

Die-casting grew big and incredibly efficient alongside the automotive industry. Automotive also created a very comfortable way of doing business. New parts appear in supplier portals. The drawing already exists. The alloy is specified. The volume is known. The quality requirements are defined. Someone else has already decided that this part should be die cast.

The foundry mainly has to calculate whether it can produce it at the requested price. That works until the same type of part reaches its 15th or 27th iteration. The risk is gone, everybody knows how to make it, and the part becomes a commodity. At that point, competing from Europe purely on price becomes very difficult.

We are Built around Automotive Speed

Automotive has also shaped how our organisations work. A new program has three or four years from early development to full series production. All the processes around nomination, tooling, sampling, changes, PPAP and ramp-up are built around that timeline.

Other industries can be completely different. You can have the first serious discussion with a customer today and one year later they expect the highest planned series volume. By then you not only have to cast the part, but machine it, coat or paint it, purchase additional components, pre-assemble certain bits, and deliver the finished product.

That speed simply isn’t normal in many automotive foundries. And that becomes a problem when we say we want to diversify.

We overthink things. We start from zero, analyse everything, create processes, discuss risks, and try to come up with the perfect solution. Sometimes the opportunity is gone before we are finished.

The same is true for market development. At some point, you have to stop discussing diversification and actually contact new industries, publish content, test applications, and learn from the response.

AI Makes Our Silence more Expensive

Most non-automotive industries don’t know what modern die casting can do. Why should they? They don’t attend Euroguss. They don’t read foundry magazines. They don’t care that you have a 2,500-ton machine or that your company has been casting aluminium since 1967. They have an engineering problem and want the best way to solve it.

Outside our industry, an enormous amount of outdated information about die casting still exists. Thin walls, weldability, heat treatment, leak tightness, structural applications, new alloys, or semi-solid casting are only present in textbooks that are decades old. At the same time, plenty of current information exists on extrusion, machining, sheet-metal forming, additive manufacturing, and polymers.

And today engineers ask AI instead of searching through ten websites.

AI simply reflects the information that is available. If the internet contains modern information about extrusion and 30-year-old generalisations about die casting, guess which process looks more attractive. We cannot complain that AI doesn’t understand casting if we refuse to tell the internet what modern casting can actually do.

So, Why aren’t Foundries Talking?

This is the part I genuinely don’t understand. At the Euroguss Executive Circle in 2024, we all basically agreed that our industry has to get out there and show what it can do. That was two years ago. There are some exceptions, but considering how much engineering knowledge sits inside European foundries, suppliers, and institutes, our external communication is still incredibly quiet.

Are we too comfortable? Are our organisations too slow? Are our decision-makers too old? Are we still waiting for automotive volumes to come back? Or do we simply believe that everybody already knows what casting can do?

Whatever the reason, doing nothing has consequences. First we lose foundries. Then we lose experienced people and process knowledge. And once that knowledge is gone, the next generation of housings, drones, robots, compressors, energy systems, and vehicles are designed around another manufacturing process. Not because casting couldn’t have produced them, but because nobody designing the product knew that it could.

Marketing is Cheaper than Bankruptcy

Developing new industries requires more than responding to RFQs. We have to identify applications, explain why casting makes sense, show engineers what is technically possible, and get involved while material, geometry, and manufacturing route are still open. Then, when the opportunity comes, we also have to move fast enough to take it.

A customer outside automotive will not give you three years. They expect a complete industrialised supply chain at full volume one year after the first conversation. That is much less comfortable than opening a supplier portal. But comfort is exactly what got us into this problem.

Foundries have no problem investing millions in machines because the result is tangible. Communication and market development feel softer because you don’t get a machine standing on the shop floor afterwards.

You build visibility. You build trust. You educate engineers. And eventually, you create applications that would otherwise never have become castings. That investment suddenly looks a lot less soft when the alternative is an empty order book. Because starting a serious communication and market-development campaign is still considerably cheaper and easier than managing a bankruptcy.

Our industry has survived for more than 5,000 years because it has kept finding new things worth casting. Maybe it is time we start doing that again.

I really hope so! And if you want to make that happen, let’s talk. I’m always looking for foundries who want to grow into new industries. Schedule a Free Consultation Call below.