We were delighted to welcome US-based Simpson Technologies to the Norican family last autumn. A fifth-generation family business, Simpson has grown successfully and expanded globally, with subsidiaries in Germany and India and a significant footprint in both foundry and chemical process industries.

Joining our group, Simpson’s global reach is now even greater, and it allows us to act as a one-stop shop for joint foundry customers. The acquisition is a natural extension of our complete green sand foundry offering, strengthening our capabilities in sand preparation, reclamation, and laboratory testing. Simpson’s market leading, reclamation products align perfectly with Norican’s environmentally responsible and energy efficient vision for the foundry industry.

In Bruce W. Dienst, who continues to head up Simpson globally, we also found a new leader for our complete Norican business in North America. Along with Bruce, Norican is also benefiting from several other talented and experienced Simpson employees, who are a joy to team up with.

In his new expanded role, Bruce will continue to champion foundry excellence by bringing the full Norican technology portfolio in front of our joint customers, from advancing digital technology adoption to accelerating efforts to improve sustainability – as well as everything from melting to shot blasting, from mixing to digital, and from molding to casting.

2022 was a year of solidifying the Monitizer technology platform. New deployments and projects are underway across the world, all on new and improved IIoT infrastructure.

Increasingly, the Monitizer Suite drives more sustainable operations for our customers. Many foundries have embraced our digital solutions to dramatically reduce scrap and all our brands have either enhanced or launched energy saving digital tools, as well as remote service offerings to reduce the carbon footprint of looking after equipment.

Recognizing the strategic value of Monitizer for all parts of our and our customers’ business and recognizing that Monitizer offers hardware agnostic solutions to the foundry industry, we have decided to elevate Monitizer to a brand of its own - to sit as an equal alongside our other strong technology brands.

To further boost our aluminum technology business, Marco Gandini joined the Norican team as Senior Vice President Global Aluminum with overall responsibility for our dedicated aluminum brands - ItalPresseGauss and StrikoWestofen.

In 2022, the StrikoWestofen team launched new, highly efficient in-cell melting – a perfect solution for larger, lighter body-in-white parts for the e-mobility market. At ItalPresseGauss, the launch of a super-modular high-pressure die casting machine range enables maximum flexibility particularly for scaled electric vehicle production.

We also made significant investments in the foundation of our business. New, more sustainable facilities were built in Metelen, Germany, and Tumkur, India, and we continued our consolidation of warehousing and manufacturing into our European hub in Príbram, Czech Republic, with the ItalPresseGauss warehouse activities being the latest to be integrated. We have also invested in our I.T. infrastructure, to enable our teams to support our customers and make operations more sustainable.  

Investing in the future of our planet

In November, we submitted our emission reduction targets for validation by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). As part of the deep dive that was necessary to establish a baseline and develop a decarbonization roadmap, we learned a lot about our impact on the planet and what we can do to reduce it. We have continued the conversations with our customers and suppliers, to drive emission reduction across the whole value chain. At the end of 2022 we were delighted that Norican globally achieved the EcoVadis Bronze sustainability award.

"I want to thank all our customers, suppliers and financial stakeholders for their continued trust, commitment, and collaboration, and for the value they place on our products, services and Norican Team."

Anders Wilhjelm

Norican Group CEO