Gas crisis in Europe has created tension for foundries, their employees and customers. Due to gas crunch, many investment casting foundries and components manufacturers in Europe see the looming future of their businesses.

Manufacturing any kind of components (including components for oil & gas, food processing, heavy & earth moving, marine and general engineering) is energy intensive in nature.

A lot of electricity is consumed to run foundries especially for the melting process. Moreover, the investment casting process is followed by melting the metal. Casting process is one of the time taking processes and requires a proper environment. Air conditioned environment in the investment section catalyses the casting process and helps achieve the desired output. Now, making the environment air conditioned at the foundry means a lot of energy consumption.

Current scenario with industries connected to gas and energy requirements does not seem to improve in the short run. Germany, Italy, Netherland, France & Poland are amongst top importers of Gas from Russia and Russia now has indefinitely halted the gas supplies to Europe. Furthermore, The Nord Stream pipeline has been damaged recently, which makes it even more uncertain on when the gas supply will resume. This has caused not only an energy or gas crunch but also a hike in the prices. The foundries manufacturing components have to pay significantly higher energy bills than they paid earlier. Many foundries are on the verge of shutting down their business and others are reducing their production to half.

Effect of the gas crisis is on multiple levels for the European industries. One, there is a price hike and another is shortage of supply of investment casting and other metal components

European countries are working to innovate on the power generation techniques including usage of hydrogen as well as switching to thermal power plants. This inventive measure is time taking and takes years. Britain has started licensing oil and gas to boost domestic supply. But, licensing will not help reduce energy bills.

Procuring investment casting processes from countries like India and maintaining inventory of components in the home country is one of the best ways to regulate the situations for European countries. Now it is the inflexion point, where higher energy bills + higher wages (due to inflationary pressures) in Europe will outweigh Logistics cost from India + inventory carrying cost.

The reason to procure the process from India is the geo-political stability, shorter shipping distance than other Asian countries and cost effective prices.

With the suggested solution the industries will be able to minimise disruptions in their production schedules. Well planned inventory cycle with the right ordering process and production phase according to the cycle can help you manage and regulate the crisis without any effects of the gas crisis

Austin Alloy Cast investment casting company in India offers cost-effective and high quality investment casting solutions to European and North America companies.