Global Production Data

• China- China continues to make shipping gains on the rest of the world. However, as the country showed an improvement of 8.9%, its rate of advancement has slowed considerably; China boosted its shipments by 23.6% in 2004. Nevertheless, the world's strongest casting power has more than doubled its 2000.

• U.S.- The U.S. has rebounded from lean times and fattened its shipping totals for three consecutive years, showing a 4.7% gain in 2005. The country is on pace to regain the near-peak levels of 2000 in the coming year, as it is now within 250,000 tons of those heights.

• Russia- Russia has been long absent from the annual census, but burst back into the top ten with a 23% shipment boost since 2000.

• Japan- Japan fell one spot in 2005 despite a 4.2% gain, owing to the reemergence of Russia.

• India- India posted the fastest growing shipping rate of the top-10 reporting nations, increasing their production by more than 32%.

• Germany- Germany showed only modest gains in 2005 (2.5%), but the country maintains the most highly productive facilities in the top-10, churning out 8,108 tons per plant last year.

• Brazil- After jumping more than 25% in 2004, Brazil saw another increase of 4.9% in 2005. Market share is focused primarily on automobiles, trucks and agricultural machine parts.

• Italy- While the country increased total shipments 4.1% in 2005, Russia's reported aluminum figures supplanted Italy as the fourth greatest producer of parts in the world.

• France- Reflecting the loss of 16 metalcasting facilities, as well as a per plant decrease of nearly 100 tons, France saw its productivity drop 5%.

• Korea- Predominately producing gray and ductile iron cast components, Korea stayed the course in 2005 with a slight increase of 2.3%.

According to a recent survey, shipments of casting products increased in 2005 all over the world, despite a slight drop in the total number of metal casting facilities. Total global tonnage showed a 7.5% increase.