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November 3, 2025
MARINETTE – The world’s largest producer of gray, ductile and austempered ductile iron castings will soon enter the final stage of a multi-year, $100-million-plus investment program to modernize operations, enhance worker safety and advance foundry technology to better serve customers.
Todd Pagel, vice president of operations at Waupaca Foundry, said the final phase of the investment includes a $20-million upgrade to Waupaca’s Plant 4 in Marinette.
“We’re operating at a scale that requires us to pursue these types of investments,” he said. “We deal pretty heavily in the automotive markets, the commercial vehicle markets, agricultural markets, industrial castings and municipal castings.”
Pagel said Waupaca has always had a culture of reinvesting in its foundries and equipment.
“By their nature, foundries use a very heavy, intensive manufacturing process, and many of the processes of equipment involved, just by their nature, tear themselves up as a part of doing their job,” he said. “As a result of that, there is always the investment to keep your equipment in good operating order.”
Pagel said a lot of the reinvestment has focused on automation.
“That’s to reduce the amount of manual material handling and reduce the amount of manual grinding our employees have to do,” he said. “We’ve made investments in automated CNC grinding technology, investments in automated casting cleaning and improving our casting cooling.”
Pagel said many of the investments are aimed at transforming the nature of the work, making it more accessible to a broader range of people.
“In this challenging workforce, automating helps reduce the amount of manpower needed to produce our product,” he said.
Investment in Plant 4
Pagel said the $20-million upgrade at Waupaca’s Plant 4 in Marinette includes a complete replacement of the facility’s melt charging system.
He said the modernization project replaces the plant’s vibratory shaker equipment with advanced steel slat conveyor systems, new weigh scales and an integrated material drying system that feeds directly into the furnace charge buckets.
As a comparison, Pagel said the former Plant 4 process involved five separate pieces of equipment.
“This will bring it down to two pieces of equipment,” he said. “[The investment will make the process more] streamlined and integrated, and we’ll take a lot of the reliability issues away by going to this inline system.”
Furthermore, Pagel said the $20 million investment will retire machinery that has been operating for three decades.
“We’re always making some level of investment – not just every 30 years,” he said. “This certainly is big and significant and a complete replacement of that 30-year-old equipment. We anticipate this new system to carry us into the next 20 years, but who knows – as markets and products change, we may need to innovate more in this area.”
Scheduled for completion early in the new year, Pagel said not only will the enhancement help streamline operations at Plant 4, it will also boost efficiency.
“In the foundry industry, you basically have about two periods each year where you can bite off big projects like this – that’s based on what our customers are doing,” he said. “Most of our customers typically take a Fourth of July shutdown, and then there’s typically a Christmas shutdown. We’re taking advantage of the Christmas shutdown period for the Plant 4 project.”
Accordingly, Pagel said the plan is to start work at Plant 4 Dec. 19.
“By Jan. 8, we will have the project completed,” he said. “That includes debugging and bringing the equipment online, and then being ready to go into production by Jan. 9. This is a very big project, all done within a three-week span. All of the old equipment will have been removed and demolished, and then all of the new equipment will have been installed, integrated, debugged and readied for production.”
Pagel said Waupaca is accustomed to working within tight schedules that align with its customers’ downtime.
“That gives us the breathing room and the capacity to tackle items like this,” he said. “Our engineering teams and our contractors and suppliers are involved in working with us on achieving those tight turnaround schedules.”
Made in the U.S.A
Pagel said the investments in Plant 4 over the years – including the upcoming one – reflect Waupaca’s ongoing commitment to maintaining world-class manufacturing capabilities in the United States.
“We are proudly made in the U.S.A.,” he said. “One of the things I know I enjoy about my job, and I think all of our associates enjoy, is the fact we get to see the product we’re making every day. We make millions of castings a year, and it’s nice to have a hand in making those products.”
According to Pagel, Waupaca is currently reaping significant benefits from the country’s ongoing reindustrialization efforts.
“We’re seeing good activity from our customers regarding bringing castings back into production in the United States of America,” he said. “We want to position ourselves to meet that need and give our customers a high-quality, made-in-the-U.S.A. component to serve their end customers.”
Though a large percentage of Waupaca’s business is high-volume runs, Pagel said that doesn’t mean the foundry shies away from smaller jobs.
“We try to cover the depth and breadth of what our market is asking us to do,” he said. “We complete low-volume jobs – 25-50 parts per year – as well. We also have volumes going up into the millions per year. We tailor our individual operations and processes around being flexible in handling both low and high volume.”
Long-term investment
Since 2016, Pagel said Waupaca has invested more than $400 million in capital improvements to build and continuously enhance state-of-the-art operations.
“It certainly helps to have really good owners over the years who understand the level of investment it takes to keep Waupaca operating at the high end of our industry,” he said. “That investment keeps us focused on what our customers are asking us to provide. Staying at the forefront of equipment and technological advances keeps you competitive in the marketplace – that’s why we’ve been around for 70 years.”
Pagel said completed enhancements include:
- Advanced safety systems – Safety PLC installations and enhanced lockout protocols across all facilities
- Energy-efficient technologies – Implementation of steel slat conveyors and electric charging systems to reduce environmental impact while improving operational efficiency
- Workplace environment improvements – Enhanced air quality systems, temperature control and ergonomic automation to create more comfortable and modern work environments
- Advanced manufacturing equipment – State-of-the-art machinery and automation technology to enhance quality, consistency and production capabilities
Happy employees make good employees
Pagel said the enhancements support Waupaca’s team of roughly 3,500 employees in Wisconsin and Indiana, more than half of whom have devoted more than 10 years to the company.
“Me, for example, I’ve been with Waupaca for more than three decades,” he said. “We enjoy a dedicated workforce, and I think that comes from the story I personally have. I started at Waupaca 33 years ago as a machine operator out on the shop floor and moved up.”
Pagel said Waupaca has a very strong promote-from-within culture.
“If you’re willing to work hard, you care about our company and you are curious about how we do things, Waupaca is a great place to move up,” he said. “We have great programs to teach, train, coach, mentor and have many advancement opportunities. I think that’s what helps us get this high level of engagement and results.”
Pagel said Waupaca is very proud of the tenure of its employees.
“We have a senior-heavy workforce, but just like any company since COVID-19, we’ve had our challenges,” he said. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen good improvement in the stabilization of our workforce, but we have more work to do. Without our workforce, none of this would happen.”
Community involvement
Beyond direct facility investments, Pagel said Waupaca actively supports the communities where it operates through equipment donations to schools and universities, support for local emergency services and participation in business, civic and environmental initiatives.
“Incorporated since 1955, community is a huge part of what we do,” he said. “For example, in Waupaca alone, we have about 1,500 of those 3,500 employees between [three different plants] and corporate headquarters. The City of Waupaca is only a community of about 6,000 people, so in many ways, our company is the community.”
The other plants in Marinette and Tell City, Indiana, Pagel said, are also in smaller communities.
“Our people are part of the community, and we like to be good citizens and support community efforts,” he said. “Scholarships are provided in each one of our communities, not only to Waupaca Foundry employees’ students but also to high-achieving students in our communities. This year alone, we will have given back about $600,000 in charitable donations to our communities and nonprofit groups, students in the community, etc.”
