Patriot Forge has used advanced technology, value added services and top-notch talent to set itself off as the leader in creating high-quality custom steel products.
Andrea Orr
Patriot Forge Co., a company that shapes raw steel ingots into industrial components, is headquartered in Brantford, Ontario, Canada., a country that long ago closed most of its steel mills
The steel it works with typically comes from domestic sources — plants in the U.S. This lack of nearby supply is just one example of the challenges of working in a maturing industry that saw its heyday years ago.
But Randy Schoenfeldt, who has served as the company’s chief executive officer since 1999, says Patriot Forge has managed to overcome tepid demand for steel by constantly working to distinguish itself from the competition with more varied and superior services.
There are really only a few basic ways of shaping steel into a finished product. The best way for critical path components is Patriot Forge’s specialty, open-die forging, a process in which the steel is heated to a point where it is quite malleable and then pressed or pounded into a shape close to the final net shape.
Because forging allows for more strength in the finished product, it is preferred for critical, sound components.
Patriot Forge makes a range of custom forged components as small as ten pounds all the way up to 30,000 pounds, for companies in the power generation, nuclear, military, aerospace and construction industries.
Although the company’s customers send in general specifications, Schoenfeldt said that it is up to Patriot Forge to determine the best way to make the product.
Over the past 30 years, technological improvements have made it possible for forging companies to adhere to more exact specifications. Patriot Forge has exploited that advanced technology and also worked to train a superior staff so that customers will recognize it as a leader in creating high-quality custom products rather than mass produced ones.
Patriot Forge will sometimes fill orders for large quantities of a single product, but at other times the order is for a single item, for which it must develop a unique forging process.
“It is not our forte to do something that 100 other people can do,” says Schoenfeldt. “We spend a lot of time on R&D on our processes, and we spend a lot of time sitting down with our customers, working through their specifications.”
From Patriot Forge’s humble beginnings as a single plant company with while-you-wait-service, it has grown to over 300 employees that operate four plants around Canada and the U.S. Patriot Forge’s goal is still to deliver this personalized touch. Its customers seem to appreciate the effort.
While the company does not disclose its sales or earnings, Schoenfeldt says that Patriot Forge has about eight percent of the forging market share in North America. It has also benefited from a surge in demand for forging services in recent years, partly reflecting customers’ growing needs for the highest quality, and strength in components which other methods of manufacture can not always produce.
Schoenfeldt says that North American revenues in the forging industry have surged from a little over $500 million three years ago to about $1.3 billion today, and that Patriot Forge’s revenues “are up accordingly.”
The company’s expansion strategy is focused on achieving a balance between driving growth and controlling growth, so that it thrives but does not lose its individual customer focus or its ability to deliver quality, customized products.
One way it has managed to achieve that balance in recent years is to become more involved in the final stages of production. The process of forging is usually followed by machining, a cold finishing process in which all surface imperfections are removed and sizes are refined to design specifications.
Patriot Forge has traditionally left most of the intricate machining to its customers. More recently it has worked with clients to add more value to product before shipping to the customers plant.
“It wasn’t always something that people wanted. They did it themselves,” says Schoenfeldt, who adds that incorporating this final process into the services it offers has helped Patriot Forge become more vertically integrated.
“Our goal is to go further into product development and design more highly processed products with superior properties,” he says, noting that it will help serve an increasingly demanding base of customers.
While companies once used computer bidding to order large quantities of parts, they are now more likely to bid individually for separate items, with great attention to the quality of the forging services.
Vertical integration and attention to skill and detail have helped Patriot Forge grow through challenging times, but it continues to face other hurdles. As more steel mills close, it loses control over the quality of the raw material it is able to purchase.
“It’s become a big issue for us,” Schoenfeldt acknowledges.
There’s also the matter of rising energy costs, which threaten to significantly erode profits. And, as a company that relies so much on a skilled work force, Patriot Forge struggles to overcome the image of steel as a tired industry with limited opportunities for young workers.
Although it invests aggressively in in-house training, it still needs to get new employees to come through its doors. Schoenfeldt says that the growing popularity of the computer and other high-tech sectors as a place to work has corresponded with a rejection of basic industries like steel.
“We do feel that a lot of people don’t have the patience to invest the time it takes to learn an industry such as forging,” he says, “but that has started to change a little bit.”
And he adds: “We have a very good retention rate once people make it past the first few months.”