Cast Iron Revival Keeps US Foundry Cooking
Tennessee company is last in nation still turning out daily production
July 22, 2011Lodge Cast Iron is the last company in the nation still turning out cast iron skillets daily. Its American competitors have all gone out of business.
Tucked between the Tennessee River and the hills of Marion County lies the small town of South Pittsburg, Tennessee. Home to just 3,200 people, it has one claim to fame: a metal foundry called Lodge Cast Iron.
Lodge is the last company in the nation still turning out cast iron skillets on a daily basis.
"We produce about 80,000 pounds [36,000 kilos] of cast iron cookware daily," says Bob Kellermann, chief executive officer of Lodge Cast Iron. "We have two high-production molding lines and each molding line will crank out 400-plus molds per hour and we run two 10-hour shifts a day, so you can do the math."
It adds up to a successful fourth-generation family-owned business that's been turning out cast iron cookware for more than a century. Lodge used to have several American competitors, but they all went out of business years ago.
Investing in new technology was the key to keeping Lodge alive.
"We re-invested our earnings every year to become more mechanized," Kellermann says. "Had we not mechanized over the years, we would’ve been out of business many years ago. Some years we survived in spite of ourselves."
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