Safe Metal, world leader in green sand cast steel components
A subsidiary of the Safe Group, a leading international industrialist, Safe Metal is the world leader in green sand cast steel components. In each of its markets, Public works and mining, Heavy-duty trucks, Rail transport, Handling and lifting, Agricultural machinery, Defense vehicles, Safe Metal supports its clients in a process of co-design of products meeting their needs for components in cast steel.
Over 50 years of industrial culture and international growth
cumulative experiences
Established as close as possible to its clients around the world, Safe Metal is the world leader in high value-added steel foundry for the transport, handling and construction markets. A long-term partner who invests in creating sustainable value, Safe Metal provides its clients with turnkey solutions. With the expertise and experience built up over 150 years, Safe Metal supports its clients from design to commissioning for parts ranging from one gram to several tons.
Each year, Safe Metal produces more than 78,000 tons of parts whose unit weights vary from a few grams to several tons depending on the application.
As part of a responsible approach to saving resources, Safe Metal recycles 35,000 tons of scrap, mostly from the automotive industry and over 90% of the sands used for casting steel components.
From a few kilos to several tons, depending on the dimensions, the weight of the parts and the size of the series, the sales network and the design offices direct the production towards the unit with the most suitable molding site and technologies.
Specialist in co-design and tailor-made production, Safe Metal’s mission is to offer its client the most suitable solution in terms of economics and feasibility.
The Safe Metal teams operate in an international network (Europe, Americas, Asia) by associating their sales, project and quality functions with those of their clients in a co-development process.
To simplify the overall chain and improve economy, Safe Metal offers a wide range of services ranging from simple components to complex sub-assemblies.
Safe Metal also offers its expertise in services and advice.
Thanks to powerful IT resources and multi-skilled teams, Safe Metal is able to:
Safe Metal has mastered experience in all of its processes, and supports its clients through to the finishing phases:
The team of around ten people works in close collaboration with private laboratories and companies that supply foundries, but also with universities at the forefront of research such as the ENSAM / ECAM material division with which a LABCOM (Joint Laboratory) should be created in 2020.
R&D partnerships also exist with the Mines Saint Etienne Engineering School, the UTBM of the University of Belfort Montbéliard, the University of Aix Marseille via the IUSTI laboratory as well as the AGH, University of Mines and Metallurgy from Krakow.
On the institutional side, in addition to participating in various projects of French competitiveness clusters, Safe Metal is a member, through its structures in the US and Mexico, of the prestigious SFSA (Steel Founders Society of America) where the R&D team offers high-level scientific and technical communications every year.
With its clients, Safe Metal is the co-holder of fifteen active patents in fields as varied as penetrating tools for excavator and loader buckets (GET) or even parts for railway braking systems (TGV and TER) with SNCF. Other technological innovations with its clients have not been the subject of patent applications but have enabled technological leaps in all the markets of Safe Metal, heavy goods vehicles, buses, defense, railways, public works, mining and agricultural machinery as well as lifting & handling.
As proof today, more than 98% of its raw materials come from recycling (scrap metal or waste from other competing industries such as forging or mechanical welding).
In terms of the molding process, unlike the usual practice in steel foundry which uses sand molds with chemical setting (furan resin (dioxin family), phenolic resin, etc.), Safe Metal is the world leader in the production of steel parts molded in green sand, 99% of its molds are composed of sand (87%), clay (10%), water (3%) and starch additives (<0.5%) from corn food residues. Safe Metal sand plants recycle 99% of the sand used to make the molds.