News

After the complete update of our online store at the beginning of last year, it was now time – one year later – to take initial stock of the situation. We discovered that our shop has been equally well-received by existing and new customers alike. 
According to customer statements, this is partly due to easy access (www.kuhn-edelstahl-shop.de) and the well-designed, very clearly-structured layout of the shop. After registering and logging on, the customer has immediate access to all products, current prices and details of stock availability, and can then submit an order directly. Our website (www.kuhn-edelstahl.deor www.kuhn-edelstahl.com) also provides a direct link to our online shop.
The maximum order-preparation time of just ten working days for the desired pipes is also an unbeatable argument for customers who need a fast and reliable supply of stainless-steel pipes. Our range includes pre-machined tubes with external diameters of between 100 mm and a maximum of 505 mm and interior diameters of 60 mm to 400 mm, with specified dimensions and materials (ferritic-carbide gravity casting, duplex steel and austenitic steels).

You too can now try out our expertise and speed, by taking advantage of our offer: the tried-and tested Kuhn seal of quality – in just ten working days

Kuhn Special Steel Taiwan: an interim balance

Ever since our subsidiary Kuhn Special Steel Taiwan relocated in September 2010, operations have been in a state of continuous development.  Production has fortunately been at full capacity from the beginning, thanks to strong demand, although there was a bottleneck affecting the recruitment of new employees and management staff. This is due to the fact that Taiwan enjoys an unemployment rate of below 3%, which effectively means that full employment prevails there. Despite this difficult environment, we have nevertheless successfully managed to pull through.

Our workforce has grown from 15 to 45 employees during this year, allowing various important projects to be implemented. Our colleagues in Taiwan are therefore now able to produce vertically-cast components with a diameter of up to 600 mm, along with items based on both conical and cylindrical machined centrifugal castings. Components destined for our customers in the Asian automotive sector have likewise been in successful high-volume production since the start of the year. A new system of quality management ensures that these products meet the high standards of the industry. In the field of industrial valves, productivity has been improved in the casting of individual balls, especially in the smaller size-ranges, in order to compensate to some extent for increased wage and energy costs. Two- and three-shift working has been introduced over the year for the entire foundry and its mechanical processing operations. In accordance with these new structures, our ISO 9001 certification has been completely renewed. Further investment has gone into an own heat-treatment plant with a handling capacity of up to three metric tons.

Our site in Taiwan has fully proven itself, since the start of the joint venture in 2000, in terms of its legal stability, management loyalty and, compared to the Asian norm, relatively low staff turnover; and we are confident of further expansion over the coming years.

The objective is to use our manufacturing operation in Taiwan to serve mainly the Asian market. We are specifically addressing those of our European customers who have also established sites in Asia over the intervening years, and would now like to be supplied locally with the familiar Kuhn seal of quality. Our ongoing, employee-oriented, business approach ensures that we can operate from Taiwan as a long-term, reliable supplier of centrifugally-cast, stainless-steel components.

In Europe, we can apply the advanced expertise and high productivity of KSST in the area of smaller centrifugal castings to valve construction and various other sectors, as part of an effort to round off our range of highly-competitive products.

The state of the order book has improved somewhat since the start of the year, but there are no hopes – as yet – of repeating the levels seen in the boom year of 2008. The market as a whole is therefore still somewhat tense, but we are nevertheless investing in new machinery, despite the general state of the economy.
We are still fully convinced of the decisive advantages to be had from our combination of centrifugal casting and highly-precise and efficient finishing options, and the quality and reliability that they deliver.

With this in mind, we have just replaced one of the older centrifugal casting machines in our foundry with a new machine that was both designed and built in-house. This supposes a further great leap forward for us in terms of reliability and operating safety. We have also expanded on the metal-machining side of the operation, with the acquisition of another two large Okuma four-axis lathes, designed to let us handle even larger diameters with extreme precision and efficiency.

Full process control with maximum efficiency and reliability sums up our goals in this respect. This is why we are also continuing to invest, despite these economically difficult times, as part of our efforts to offer you long-term reliability on the basis of our state-of-the-art plant equipment.

Our subsidiary has much to offer after its relocation and expansion.

Kuhn Special Steel Taiwan (KSST), with its new, centrally-located production facilities and offices in the region of Yunlin, is well prepared for future success. The new site fulfils all the conditions that this success requires, including a well-trained workforce and the required means of production.

Construction is currently under way on six melting furnaces, with a maximum capacity of 250 kg to one metric ton per furnace. The number of centrifugal casting machines capable of handling both vertical and horizontal items is also being increased considerably.

Major resources are being invested in plant machinery. Examples include the 19 vertical ball-making machines designed for the production of shifting balls used in valve construction, which form part of a new set of working procedures intended to deliver a considerable increase in productivity. Thanks to these changes at a production and processing level, we are now also able to manufacture such items as decanter components, heat-resistant tubes for use in the construction of industrial furnaces and valve seat rings.

Our focus is to shift in the near future to the further development of our mechanical processing facilities and an increase in the number of materials that we handle, in order to offer Asian markets the widest possible range of products, all made to Kuhn’s renowned quality specifications.

We are supporting KSST with all the resources at our disposal. Our process engineer Christian Laudenberg has been working since August at KSST in Taiwan, for example. He is there to ensure that the production processes used at KSST are as compatible as possible with those of Kuhn Special Steel.

Many of our customers have been following developments at KSST with great interest, and have welcomed this daring venture, as it gives them a chance to invest in an Asian market that can now be served by KSST with short transport routes and products made to Kuhn’s quality standards.

The table below shows the current production performance of KSST in comparison to earlier periods.