Origins
Cronite’s story began in 1917, when the company Klefisch was set up in Wuppertal. Klefisch soon established itself as a front-runner in the design and manufacture of heat-resisting fixtures in refractory alloys and sub-sets for heat-treatment facilities, like furnace bells, quenching tanks, and also supports for treated parts.
In 1919, Cronite Castings was founded in England. Up until 1960, Cronite Castings basically perfected its know-how in refractory alloys by producing components for steam boilers used in the shipbuilding industry and then it set up a foundry in Crewkerne, thus competing with Klefisch.
In 1935, the Bollée Dynasty, a family of inventors who started off as travelling church-bell founders, set up Mancelle de Fonderie, to supply materials to its piston-ring manufacturing plant. Later on, Mancelle de Fonderie bought Segment AB (still a subsidiary of Cronite Group), after specialising in heat-resisting steels, thus joining Klefisch and Cronite Castings to form the national trio of European leaders in heat-resisting steel applications for industry.
Consolidation
In 1982, the AFE Group (named SAFE in 2013) acquired Mancelle de Fonderie and thus laid the first brick of the present-day group. AFE took over Klefisch in 1990 and Cronite Casting in 1992, to become the European leader called AFE TECHNOLOGIES.
In 2004, AFE TECHNOLOGIES started to set up operations in other continents and changed its name several times. The Branch was successively called AFE CRONITE TECHNOLOGIES, AFE CRONITE and finally SAFE CRONITE until 2018.
Between 2004 and 2018, Cronite acquired BELOG GUSS in Brno in the Czech Republic which became the CRONITE CZ research centre in 2007. In 2006, CRONITE WUHAN was created and then in 2007 the first part was cast at CRONITE MEXICO. In 2014, SAFE CRONITE’s head office was moved to Geneva in Switzerland. In 2017 SAFE CRONITE took over the Manoir Industries alloy foundry in India, Kartik Steels, which became CRONITE KARTIK, and finally just before leaving SAFE, CRONITE opened a new site in South Korea, in partnership with DKtec, in order to implement its new Caburization Resistance (CR) technology.
On 18 October 2018, CRONITE became independent from SAFE after 35 years under its control. CRONITE is now an international group which has consolidated its world leadership thanks to its expertise in designing systems and inventing materials exposed to extreme temperatures and atmospheres.
