| GIW hosts a grand opening for its news foundry (above). Below, from the left: Tamara Lopez (executive assistant), Robert Visintainer (VP engineering); Enrico Handrick (VP finance); Gary Holley (director HR); Dennis Ziegler (president and CEO); Charlie Stone (VP sales and marketing); and Thomas Mueller (VP operations). |
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Long term, this expansion will give GIW/KSB a significant advantage in the mining market. This investment will allow for better handling of the sizeable castings needed by GIW’s customers. Some produced by GIW can weigh well more than 40,000 lb and are bigger than a cement truck. This expansion will allow GIW to keep up with current market demand and to be able to quickly adapt to support future growth.
GIW Industries Inc. was established as a small, family-owned foundry and machine shop in 1891 — known then as Georgia Iron Works. By 1914, the company was supplying slurry pumps to the Florida phosphate industry. Over the years, GIW became known for its severe abrasive handling pumps and began a century of facility expansion and technology growth. In 1996, GIW became a wholly owned subsidiary of KSB, and in 2014, the GIW Minerals brand was established.
The newly expanded Grovetown foundry is now the No. 1 white-iron foundry in the world, boasting state-of-the-art equipment, highly efficient workflows, top safety features, and significantly greater capacity for both output and storage of very large slurry pump parts. “There are places around the world that make a high-chrome iron, but not anything like our proprietary alloys. It’s these alloys that make GIW products unique and enable us to deliver incredibly long wear life for our products,” said Richard Sterzen, manager industrial engineering.
Work on the new distribution center is currently under way and is slated to be completed in mid-2016. The building will initially be 59,000 sq.-ft but it was designed with options for increased capabilities to allow for future expansion.
