In mid-2024, Nordstern Group in Winnipeg, Canada, parent company of AFS Corporate Member Sure Cast near Minneapolis, Minnesota, purchased a next-door building to add to its primary manufacturing campus. A $7.5-million renovation is now underway that is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025. Both of Nordstern’s metalcasting plants––Sure Cast and Custom Castings in Winnipeg are aluminum foundries.

The renovated facility will complement the organization’s two existing operations at the Winnipeg site: Custom Castings, a permanent mold foundry, and ProTek Surface Technologies, the group’s coating division. 

Casting Source visited with Nordstern Vice President of Business Development Darren Lodge to hear the details and his reflections on North America’s aluminum casting industry. 

What was the catalyst for the expansion Nordstern Group has undertaken?

Lodge: From a catalyst standpoint, and I think this is probably something your readers will be highly aware of, aluminum casting capacity in North America is generally shrinking. Sometimes it’s a succession planning issue where small, family-owned businesses don’t have someone who’s been able to take over that business. And at the same time, there is significant reshoring happening. In some cases, the amount of business being reshored is so significant that it’s displacing incumbent customers at foundries, and those customers are then left floundering, looking for a foundry to help them.

The unmet demand has been a trigger for us as a supplier to increase our capacity. It’s been a part of our brand and our tagline from the outset that “we’re investing in your future.” That’s even more meaningful now. We are particularly interested in assisting customers with those very difficult-to-source parts that have a lower volume and a complex design. 

We wanted to make sure we were offering a premium level of service, and that’s what Sure Cast offers. 

But even after our $5-million investment to upgrade Sure Cast in 2022, we don’t see the industry ratcheting up enough to satisfy the demand––for example, one major healthcare OEM came to us with a $1 million project because they were displaced at a foundry for being “too small.”  

What does the total Nordstern investment look like?

Lodge: In our forecasting, we’re looking one to five years out and saying, ‘we think the market is going to keep growing, and here is the equipment and the technology we need to get into the building. 

Nordstern is investing in new equipment installations for Custom Castings, which will include an automated machining cell, heat treating equipment, Makino CNC mills, new tilt pour machines, and robotic automated sawing. 

Overall, our total investment is about $17 million that we’re putting into the facilities here in Winnipeg, and our facilities in Minneapolis. We had the opportunity to purchase the building that’s next door to our existing two operations in Winnipeg, Custom Castings, a permanent mold foundry, and Protek Surface Technologies, our coating specialty division. And we’re doing a $10 million renovation on the building we have purchased.

How do your Winnipeg and Minnesota geographies work to your advantage?

Lodge: We are uniquely positioned geographically, with Manitoba literally in the middle of all the freight lines around North America. We also have a cross section of very diverse markets that we serve, from construction and agriculture equipment to utility and medical equipment.

How many people does Nordstern Group employ, and do you foresee more jobs being created?

Lodge: We currently employ 230 people across all our companies, which also includes Forte Tooling Technologies located close to our Winnipeg campus.

In the future, I think we’re probably looking at potentially upwards of 30–50 new jobs that will come on line in the next 12–36 months, depending on the pace of business growth and what we’ll need to support it.

Where does the new capacity come into the picture?

Lodge: Over the next 12 months, we’ll be taking all of our precision machining operations that are in Custom Casting now, which occupies about 50% in the foundry, plus the entire coating division and shipping, and putting them in the new building. What that will do is open 50% of the production space in Custom Castings, where we’ll add brand new equipment and effectively double our capacity. 

While we do have existing customers that want to utilize some of that capacity, we are actively seeking anchor tenants to fill that all that capacity. 

We truly are investing in this industry to support North American manufacturing, and we’re really hoping that it’s a trend throughout North America. North American manufacturing needs to be re-founded.

Bringing in new casting programs doesn’t just happen overnight, right? How should casting buyers plan to potentially take advantage of newly opened capacity for aluminum castings?

Lodge: Whether it’s us or other casting sources, it’s never too early to start talking to the foundry. If you’re either designing new parts for new equipment, designing new tooling, or even moving tooling to a new facility, these processes always take more months than everyone expects. 

Our business is vertically integrated in all of our services––we have our own tooling division that we control with our own design engineers at each of the different facilities. We can to do the machining, we can do the coating, and we offer a bolt-on-ready component. We’re here to accelerate our customers’ product launches, and because we have everything in-house, we’re not restricted by someone else’s lead times or additional margins. One of our biggest value propositions is the speed of getting our customer to market.