Isabellenhütte Newsletter 
Q2/2020

Preface Newsletter

Ladies and gentlemen and colleagues,

In this edition of our six-monthly newsletter, we would like to bring you up to date as usual with the current situation and developments in the Alloys Business Unit (BU-LE).

You won’t be surprised to hear that I will be going into the coronavirus pandemic that has cast such a shadow over all of our lives. We have taken every possible protective measure. For instance, virtually all of our administrative staff have at times been working from home. These employees are spending alternate weeks in the office and at home. In production, we’ve organized the shifts to ensure that individual members of staff from different shifts don’t run into each other. We have adopted a wide range of hygiene measures. These measures combined have resulted in the happy situation that not a single case of COVID-19 has been confirmed to date in our HQ.

Fortunately, the all-consuming issue of coronavirus has still left some room for other matters that concern the development of BU-LE. You will find information on process organization, development and marketing issues and investment themes as you read on. We want to make it clear to everyone that we’re already positioning ourselves for the time after the current crisis. As soon as the economy starts to pick up, we in BU-LE will be ready to emerge from the current situation even stronger than before.

Review of Quarter 1 / 2020

Alongside the slowdown in the economy, the current coronavirus crisis has overshadowed everything that we have done until now. Since the end of January, we have been confronted daily with new challenges that require us all to respond with the utmost flexibility. For the first three months we did not have to resort to short-time working. Since May, however, we have been in an indefinite short-time work phase.

In the following, I would like to show you the economic data, both for individual months and cumulatively, for the first quarter of 2020, in each case compared with the management case (planned figure).

With a good February compared to the management case and an even better March, we were able to compensate for the weak start to the year in January. In both turnover and sales, we are almost at the admittedly low level set out in the management case.

Outlook for Quarter 2 / 2020

The current picture we are getting from our market and our customers is a very heterogeneous one. We are seeing the erosion of our markets, both regionally and in the final applications. Unfortunately, the very low level of sales in April and an equally poor incoming orders situation have confirmed our fears.

Outlook for applications

The extreme weakness of the automotive sector has also made itself felt in the alloys area, while Aerospace has practically ground to a halt. Mechanical engineering is in a similarly critical condition. All the applications used in heating systems are in comparatively healthy demand.

Outlook for regional markets

Between mid-January and now, Asia has to all intents and purposes disappeared from view. Production in China is currently ramping up, rather like the social life in that country.

The US is still a positive exception. There, we are seeing strong turnover and sales figures. And yet, there are fears here of plant closures on a huge scale, with the associated collapse in sales.

Southern Europe has for the last three months virtually disappeared as a market. Italy, Spain and France have all introduced restrictive measures, resulting in the closure of customer plants.

Germany, northern and eastern Europe are still active, albeit with very marked differences between sectors.

This highly volatile situation requires a great deal of flexibility from everyone involved, including in the application of the short-time working instrument. In our response to the individual capacity situations and external events (works vacations, stock buildup and plant closures) we are using the short-time working instrument to intervene in capacities with varying degrees of intensity.

On the positive side, we have been able to win back customers who have stopped buying from us in the past due to a perception of poor performance on the part of Isabellenhütte. Seen from this perspective, the crisis also offers us a great opportunity to present our market in a positive light and to emerge from this crisis strengthened in comparison to our international competitors. Let us take this opportunity to work together to shape the future of the alloys business unit and, with it, the future of Isabellenhütte itself.

I would like to thank you for your understanding, support and dedication in what will hopefully turn out to be unique times.

I wish you good luck and good health to you and your families.

Jens Hartmann
Leader Global Business Unit Alloys & Executive Vice President


Isabellenhütte meets high covid-19-related demand in record time - Heat conductors of ISOTAN® for ventilators

Isabellenhütte supplies the alloy ISOTAN® as a heat conductor for ventilators. When demand for ventilators shot up as a result of the recent developments related to the coronavirus, Isabellenhütte put their rapid and reliable supply performance to the test.
This is project organized by the federal government in which Isabellenhütte acts as a supplier to a reputable cable manufacturer. This cooperation had already been established for several years, but the project gained new significance in the context of coronavirus developments. 

Increased demand of 1,000 percent
While 40 kilograms of ISOTAN® were still ordered from Isabellenhütte as the usual annual quantities in February 2020, the cable manufacturer had to put in a subsequent order for a further 400 kilograms in late March. A special challenge, which Isabellenhütte tackled head on, as Dora Kosiarska, Area Sales Manager for Alloys at Isabellenhütte, explains: “We knew right away how important and urgent this issue was, and wanted to make our contribution. Because we produce our alloys at the primary site in Dillenburg and had enough raw materials, we could move straight to implementation. We created extra capacity so that we could meet the increased demand within only two days. It was therefore possible for the customer to start with their own cable production immediately.” The normal delivery times for wires such as ISOTAN® are typically several weeks at Isabellenhütte.

Heat conductors warm the breathing gas
ISOTAN® serves to condition the breathing gas in the ventilator cable. The heat conductor ensures that the supplied breathing gas is warmed to body temperature before it reaches the patient. If the temperature is too low, there is a risk of hypothermia and lung damage.

Long lifecycle and dependable
ISOTAN® is a typical heat conductor used in potentiometers or heating pads, for example those used in floor heating systems. It features low temperature coefficients of electrical resistance for a very large range of temperatures, i.e. it reacts to changes in resistance with only very low changes in temperatures (in special quality +/- 10 ppm per Kelvin). In addition, ISOTAN® is oxidation and corrosion-resistant and thus has a very long lifecycle and is robust to outside effects. In medical technology, reliability and a long lifecycle are central material requirements in view of the demands placed on the cables.

ISOTAN® is supplied as a round wire which is then further processed and sheathed by the cable manufacturer.

Dora Kosiarska
Area Sales Manager Alloys

 


New product development - we’re pulverizing our alloys

This is a rough description of the new business idea.
Application development has been looking at new fields of application for quite a while. In this connection, ever more attention is being brought to bear on powder metallurgy as a sub-area.
Following recent successful studies, we can now convert our alloys into a defined powder form. This uses an inert gas atomization process in which liquid alloy material is atomized by a high gas-volume flow. The result is a spherical alloy powder.

This alloy powder can be used in various application technologies. One of these is known as thick-film technology.
Thick-film technology makes it possible to produce a wide range of components using paste printing. For this purpose, the alloy powder is initially converted into a paste by adding organic auxiliary materials. This paste is then applied by screen printing to a carrier substrate (generally a thin aluminium oxide ceramic) and sintered. 

Alongside our alloy paste, a copper paste for electrical contact and a passivation paste, mostly made of glass, are overprinted and likewise sintered. After the sintering process, components with properties comparable to our standard products are produced in this way.

Phillip Prinz

Development Engineer
Alloys & Applications

 

Tanja Busch
Product Manager Business Unit  Alloys


ISA-CON 414® - Product update

The ISA-CON® product family consists of low alloyed copper alloys with high electrical conductivity and mechanical strength. The alloy ISA-CON® 414 is optimized for thin solid wires and stranded wires with a conductivity of at least 90% copper conductivity (IACS). This is well above the requirements of ASTM-B-624, which is the original specification for ISA-CON® 414.

Comparable products available on the market (e.g. Perkon24, Fisk) could therefore be replaced by ISA-CON® 414. For some customers, flex life properties are very important to avoid metal fatigue. IC414 greatly surpasses pure copper on account of its higher mechanical strength, but in comparison to similar strands of competitors only 50% lifetime has been achieved so far. This might partially also be related to details our standard strand configuration.

Now we are able to manufacture run lengths / weights in series production and samples are available for potential customers. Different strand configurations are possible with diameters of strands >= 0.10mm. Plating with silver is optional. Currently samples with and without silver plating are available as 19 x 0.10mm stranded wire. About 100 kg could additionally be processed in a few weeks. We are open to different diameters and strand configurations.

Single solid wire is available in diameters of 0.127 – 0.300 mm. Thinner diameters down to 0.080 mm can be realized, but they are very expensive and should not be considered. Diameters above 0.300 mm are intermediate products (“pre drawn wire”) and should also not be offered to customers, since the specification of ISA-CON 414 can only be achieved after an annealing step at the final diameter. In general, details for this very small process window cannot be given away. However, this is not a problem if ISA-CON 414 is to be used in a hard variant without annealing.

Outlook
In long term, the flex life properties will be improved.
 

Dr. Malte Scherff
Development Engineer Alloys & Applications

Tanja Busch
Product Manager Business Unit Alloys


New state-of-the-art stranding machine

In the last few weeks, we have become the proud owners of a state-of-the-art stranding machine.
This system from Maschinenfabrik Niehoff, which was unveiled for the first time at the Wire trade exhibition in 2017, has some new features in store. 

The D 632 is designed to manufacture copper strands with cross-sectional areas of 0.09 to 6.00 mm² and a steplessly variable lay length from 6 to 100 mm. The maximum number of twists is 6,500 per minute; the top speed is 300 m / min. The machine was developed to make high-strength wire strands from copper alloys (for instance, CuMg alloys) for automotive wiring.

This machine will help us optimize our production process for technically demanding wire strands.
The D 632 is equipped with an efficient energy-class IE3 rotor drive and an adjustable fan drive in a sound-proof cabin. A further special feature is the patented laying system which makes it possible to spool the strands to perfection in a fully automatic process. The spooled product can then be paid off at high speed without tangling or damage. Other features include the tried-and-tested energy-saving single bow (ECO-Bow) design, the contactless transmission of machine data within the machine and the NMI touch-screen display with its color user interface and simplified navigation structure.

Thanks to these innovative design properties, energy savings of up to 30% can be achieved.
The machine is also equipped with a new 24-line payoff from special machine builder Kurre, which automatically regulates the tension of the wires being fed into the machine and stops the stranding machine in the event of a wire break. This improves both process safety and productivity at this point, as the system can in principle also be operated in ghost shifts.

Jörg Sack in cooperation with Maschinenfabrik NIEHOFF GmbH & CO. KG
Industrial Engineering Process Technology Metallurgy

 


Structural alteration in the Headquarter in Dillenburg: New road access and road widening

This spring witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony for the new logistics center. Since then, plans to connect the new building with the rest of the site have been firmed up and are moving ahead.

The overall concept was introduced back in 2018 in the context of the master plan, which presented a possible final construction stage for the Dillenburg site.  This set out for the first time plans for both the new access road and the linking arrangements for the logistics centre.
The plans for the construction work were further fleshed out in the course of last year. At the same time, agreements were reached with the Hessenforst forest authorities, road infrastructure authority Hessen Mobil, and the Lahn-Dill district council. These agreements formed the basis of the authorization procedure for the construction of the new access road and the widening of the existing road to the rear of the site. After numerous meetings with the authorities, the green light was finally given for the construction work. In the new year, work started on the development of the new transport links. 

As with nearly all building work which involves digging deeper into the ground at the Dilenburg site, it was first of all necessary to scour the construction site for the new access road for unexploded munitions from the war. Construction work began as soon as the construction site had been released by the specialist firm in charge of the search.

Four months of construction work have now passed. Many tons of material have been removed and processed. The existing road has been enlarged to a width of 7.5 meters. Head-on encounters between two trucks are finally no longer an issue.  Some 5000m³ of material has been extracted at the site. Part of it has been used to fill in the new parking lot behind the passive components building. The existing parking spaces have had to be relocated in the course of the building work on the site. New parking spaces have also been created.
The new access road and the road widening work will be completed by the end of May. The old access road will then be closed and dismantled. As a final step, the parking lot here will also be reorganized.

Jan-Felix Wege
Project Engineer Industrial Engineering


Touchpoint Analysis and Customer Journeys - Planned Improvements

Based on the persona analysis in the previous year, we investigated the most important touchpoints of our customers. The benefit for our customers is a better targeted service provided by Isabellenhütte regarding sales promotion and support.

Basically, customer journeys define all phases and touchpoints customers pass through before they decide to buy products and also includes the most important phases of a customer relationship. Touchpoints regarding the brand, product and services are considered. Your feedback has been taken into account because we have been discussing your needs in several workshops with colleagues who are responsible for you from various departments and also considered your feedback from previous discussions.

During the past weeks we have been working on detailed suggestions for improvement and on an implementation plan to be permuted on short notice and long-term.

Major findings regarding your needs for sales planning and promotion:

  • strategic product roadmaps
  • 3D illustrations
  • Improved online visibility (SEO, SEA, on-site)
  • Technical webinars
  • constant supply of valuable content e.g. application notes for new products and new applications for well-known products, success stories
  • easier access to product datasheets, certificates and contacts on our webpage
  • stockage for standard product sizes
  • service portal

We started already with the implementation of first measurements and will inform you about the implementation in upcoming newsletters.
If there are questions or suggestions for improvement in the meantime, please feel free to contact me.

Corinna Roth
Marketing Manager Headquarter