Our Mission is to Grow the Pie for Austempering……and BOY is the pie growing! Demand for Austempering remains at record levels. Producers up and down the supply chain are straining their capacity, resulting in a flattening out of US manufacturing growth. With certain parts of the economy still in recession, manufacturers have been slow to pull the trigger on capacity-expanding capital expenditures. Orders in the capital equipment business have now increased, but the entire US manufacturing industry is the bottleneck right now……Applied Process Inc. included. It will take several months to right-size capacities with demand but accelerating growth in US manufacturing is expected in 2012.
In a longer-term view, SAE Off-Highway Engineering magazine reported on recent comments by John Deere’s Chairman and CEO, Samuel Allen. Mr. Allen stated that, “A steadily growing population will result in at least 30% more people to feed, shelter and clothe in the next 40 years. This must be done with basically the same amount of land, water and other inputs such as fertilizer”. Just think of that….a 30% increase in per-acre productivity. Mr. Allen further stated that, “Largely as a result of productivity advances, the typical US farmer today feeds over 150 people; six times more than in 1960”. In the 1930’s approximately 40% of the US population was directly employed in the production of our food. Today, less than 2% of the US population is feeding the US and exporting food worldwide. So dramatic productivity increases are not new to US farmers and ranchers.
John Deere is the leader in the US agricultural equipment industry. The Agricultural equipment industry, worldwide, will play a central part in future productivity gains in food production. But whether the equipment is green, red, yellow or blue; Austempered Steel, Carbo-Austemperedsm Steel, Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI), Carbidic Austempered Ductile Iron (CADIsm), Austempered Gray Iron (AGI) and Locally Austempered Ductile Iron (LADIsm) processed by the Applied Process companies and our affiliates will be getting the job done.