History

Incorporation of Finesco (Pty) Ltd – the development company tasked with the development of the ADE facility. Construction of ADE in Atlantis begins.

Completion of the ADE machining and assembly facility with the first roll-off of “Engine Number 1”, (Picture available) Official opening of ADE Construction of Atlantis Foundry by Ferroform Durban Transport Management Board orders 150 MAN buses powered by ADE 407 engines

First castings produced by the Foundry First release of ADE powered ERF model 66 truck

Introduction of first Computer Aided Design drafting system Construction of Employee Housing scheme in Robinvale, Atlantis

Foundry purchased from Ferroform Group and incorporated into ADE

Foundry produces 45,000 castings

ADE Sport Complex is opened in Atlantis

6-tonne pressure pour furnace installed

Power House Engineering (Pty) Ltd formed as a distributer of ADE products

Conversion of petrol-driven mini-bus taxis to diesel-driven engines by Power House Engineering using ADE engines ADE achieves ISO 9001certification ADE purchases ADE Reman from Probuilt NEI Africa to rebuild and recondition ADE engines already in the market

ADE assembles tractors for Massey Ferguson The MAN 26.502 truck is named the most powerful truck in South Africa and is powered by an ADE engine

Golden Arrow Buses replaces the engines in its 700-strong fleet with ADE 447 engines ADE is appointed as distributor in Southern Africa by Perkins UK

100,000th 300 series engine is produced at ADE

ADE wins contract to supply 140,000 engine blocks for Mercedes Benz passenger vehicles ADE 447 series engines are selected to power Nissan Diesel Coca Cola Delivery Trucks ADE completes delivery of 10,000 diesel engines to partner company in Cuba

DaimlerChrysler purchases the Business Park and the machining facilities

3rd 10 tonne induction furnace installed to increase melting capacity

Installation of first modern era core shooting machine

Commencement of the Atlantis Foundries Expansion Project (AFEX) – a new fettling area, new coreshop and 2nd moulding line

Start of production of new multi-stage shot blast machine

Addition of a 4th 10-tonne induction furnace to further increase melting capacity

Record year of production to date – 60,000 tonnes cast Incorporation of robotics within the production process with the commissioning of the first two robots ‘Nizaam’, installed in the Reichmann Shotblast machine, and ‘Eben’ for automatization of core dipping

Roll-out of plant-wide visual safety program Start of the Mouldline 1 upgrade and next-generation product implementation programs

Addition of ‘Scarra’ to the AF robot team, a vent drilling robot on the mouldline

Fire stops production for 8 days after technical failure. Nobody was injured as a result of the incident ‘Eben II’ is flown in to replace the original ‘Eben’ Installation of robot ‘Demitri’ on the Mouldline as an additional safety measure to avoid pouring of scrap moulds.

Atlantis Foundries sold by Daimler AG (Mercedes-Benz South Africa), to Neue Halberg-Guss GmbH

79,000 tonnes cast beating the previous record set in 2012 by 19,000 tonnes.

Paint for core assemblies is changed from alcohol-based to water-based, improving health and safety of our Employees and the environment

Installation of Core Drilling robot ‘Cheslin’, Offloading robot ‘Caster’, and training robot ‘Robbie’ Introduction of the use of Artificial Intelligence in production to help predict and identify scrap and sub-surface defects

Implementation of automatic inspection, further utilising Artificial Intelligence to improve the quality process Installation of robot ‘Steven’ to automatically mill front and rear faces of castings, reducing the fettling workload. Robot ‘Siya’ installed to automatically load and unload castings for spotting