According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global iron castings market is expected to reach USD 126.18 million metric tons by 2021, growing at a CAGR of nearly 7%.

This research report titled ‘Global Iron Castings Market 2017-2021’ provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

Commodity and specialized castings are the major categories of castings. Commodity castings are generally less sophisticated and can be produced by most vendors as it does not require technical skill and advanced technologies. Specialized castings generally require more complex designs and manufacturing technologies, and may be proprietary.

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Technavio’s analysts categorize the global iron castings market into three major segments by product:

• Gray Iron Castings
• Ductile Iron Castings
• Malleable Iron Castings

Global gray iron castings market

Gray iron is one of the most widely used metals. Its versatile characteristics facilitate the companies engaged in the iron casting industry to employ different molding techniques. It is easier to cast and less costly to produce when compared with the other types of cast iron.

According to Chandrakumar Badala Jaganathan, a lead metals and minerals research analyst from Technavio, “Solidification shrinkage rate of gray iron is minimal when compared with ductile iron. It does not require much heat to achieve the melting point, which makes the manufacturing process easy and has greater fluidity in the mold.”

Global ductile iron castings market

“Ductile iron has much higher tensile strength than gray iron. It possesses many of the engineering qualities of steel and processing capabilities of iron. The alloy is produced by adding magnesium to molten iron to increase the ductility, stiffness, tensile strength, and impact resistance of the resulting castings,” says Chandrakumar.

Global malleable iron castings market

Malleable cast iron has properties similar to ductile iron. However, it is produced through a lengthy period of annealing in a special furnace to induce characteristics, such as increased strength, ductility, durability, resistance to atmospheric corrosion, and ease of machining.

A prolonged heat treatment of white cast iron decomposes carbides to release free carbon as graphite aggregates. The lengthy annealing period increases the relative cost of producing castings of malleable. Therefore, the alloy is largely replaced with ductile iron in many applications, including industrial machinery and automotive parts.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio’s research analysts in this report are:

• Brakes India Limited
• Dandong Foundry
• Grede Holdings
• Grupo Industrial Saltillo
• Hinduja Foundries
• Hitachi Metals
• OSCO Industries