Scania marks foundry's centenary

Scania has produced a YouTube clip to commemorate 100 years of history at its Swedish engine foundry

A lot happened in 1914. The Panama Canal opened, the first shots rang out in World War I, and Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on his ill-fated expedition across Antarctica. And, in the Swedish town of Sodertalje, an engine foundry was established for automotive manufacturing firm AB Scania-Vabis – the firm that would go on to become commercial vehicle giant, Scania.

In 2014 Scania's engine foundry marks its centenary, and the plant has come a long way since men used sledgehammers to knock the sand out of cast cylinder blocks and heads. Today it produces between 85,000 and 90,000 engines each year, the units destined for a variety of trucks, buses and boats, among other commercial applications.

Kent Wargclou, a former head of the foundry who worked at the site for 42 years, says the plant's history is underpinned by several common threads.

"The operation has a long history, but our focus has always been on quality, tensile strength and the working environment," he says.

While the passage of time has seen the work shift from largely manual labour to the latest cutting-edge computer-guided machines, Scania R&D Design Engineer Fredrik Wilberfors says the site has always delivered one important benefit to the company: control.

"The largest advantage of having our own foundry is that we can control the quality in all steps of the production process, right from the beginning with the casting of the part until machining and the final assembly of the engine," he says.

It's certainly a proud history, and one Scania thinks is worth celebrating – and so it recently published this slick little YouTube clip to mark the occasion…

Scania marks foundry's centenary

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