Milestone for Hydro Aluminium Castings: 40 million cylinder heads
(Oct. 29, 2003) Hydro Aluminium has produced its 40,000,000th cylinder head. This is living proof of the increasingly strong penetration of aluminium in the automotive industry, Hydro Aluminium states in a press announcement.
 CYLINDER HEAD: Dieter J. Braun (left), president of Hydro Aluminium Automotive, is pleased to receive cylinder head no. 40,000,000 from operator Zoltan Kópasci at Hydro Aluminium Györ, Hungary. |
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"This is one more symbol for our expertise as a comprehensive supplier to the automotive industry. Hydro Aluminium totals more than two billion Euro each year of automotive related sales", said Dieter J. Braun, president of Hydro Aluminium Automotive, when he recevied a GM Fam 0 cylinder head from the local workforce when the company celebrated the milestone at its plant in Györ, Hungary.
Hydro Aluminium is the world leader in aluminium solutions to the automotive industry with strong positions in a number of lightweight applications.
Hydro Aluminium Automotive has more than 20 units in Europe, North and South America and Asia supplying the automotive industry. More than 6,000 employees work to meet the individual lightweight demands for cars with the development and production of future-oriented aluminium and magnesium components from precision tubes, extrusion based structures and crash management applications, castings to tailor-made alloys and sheet.
The Hungarian foundry produced its first aluminium castings in August 1996, and in April 1997, it began delivering to General Motors Europe the GM Fam 0 cylinder heads for the carmaker's 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 litre Corsa/Astra engines.
Today, the plant employs 470 people and produces 900,000 units a year for customers like Opel, Audi, BMW and Renault.
The success story for Hydro Aluminium Automotive's Castings business unit started in the mid-1980s, when OEMs began replacing cast iron heads with aluminium solutions. The company invested in TRIDEM technology for gravity die casting at its Castings plants in Austria (Mandl&Berger in Linz) and the UK (Motorcast in Leeds) to profit from the new demand.
In the early 1990s, multi-valve technology, with 3-to-5 valves, made a design change necessary. Again, Hydro was at the forefront of these developments and grew with greenfield investments in Hungary (Györ) and Germany (Dillingen).
At the end of the decade, the European market developed toward new combustion technologies like VVT (Variable Valve Timing) and GDI (Gasoline Direct Injection). In turn, Hydro started to supply cylinder heads to BMW (valvetronic) and Opel (GDI) using these technologies.
The growing attractiveness of diesel engines and the enhanced development toward second- and third-generation common rail injection systems - with up to 2,000 bar pressure - pushed the need for high-strength cylinder heads. Consequently, Hydro introduced its new casting technology ROTACAST into the market and will now start to supply the all-new Jaguar V6 diesel cylinder head.
Hydro Aluminium currently supplies more than 4 million cylinder heads per year to the automotive industry. The Castings business unit is also the leading independent supplier of aluminium engine blocks, and is increasing its portfolio of cast chassis parts. Mastering all major casting processes, Hydro Aluminium can build on own benchmark technology like the Core Package System CPS©.
- Hydro Aluminium is the largest integrated aluminium company in Europe and one of the three leading integrated aluminium companies in the world. Hydro Aluminium has 27,000 employees in 28 countries.
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