Aalberts IPS Highlights Vertically Integrated Foundries for Apollo Valves

Aalberts integrated piping systems (IPS) Americas has highlighted the in-house alloy production and vertical integration powering its "Apollo"^® Valves portfolio. Operating two fully functional foundries in South Carolina, the company controls the complete manufacturing cycle—from pouring and casting to machining, assembly, testing, and packaging. This integrated footprint enables precise oversight over material composition and finished product quality across diverse applications, including commercial plumbing, chemical processing, municipal waterworks, marine, and power generation.

The operations are distributed across two specialized sites. The Pageland facility specializes in copper-based alloys, casting materials such as ASTM B584 C84400, ASTM B62 C83600, and ASTM B584 C89836 lead-free bronze to support trusted product lines like the 70-100 and 70LF series. Meanwhile, the Myrtle Beach location pours steel, ferrous alloys, and specialized nickel alloys—including 316 stainless steel, Alloy 20, and Hastelloy C—for demanding operating conditions. These advanced alloys support heavy-duty products such as the "Apollo" 86B-100 three-piece full port ball valve and top-entry ball valves, which require exceptional resistance to high temperatures, high pressures, and corrosive media.

Additional Context
This section provides technological and market background not explicitly detailed in the original release.

Over the past several decades, many North American valve manufacturers transitioned to fabless or outsourced models, relying on overseas foundries for rough castings to lower labor costs. However, this model often introduces extended lead times, vulnerability to global logistics bottlenecks, and inconsistent metallurgical quality. Maintaining domestic, vertically integrated foundries provides valve makers with direct traceability of raw melt charges, ensuring strict compliance with stringent material standards such as the Safe Drinking Water Act (which mandates strict lead-free thresholds for potable water fixtures) and NACE MR0175/ISO 15156 standards for sulfide stress cracking in chemical environments. In mission-critical processing plants, having 100% factory-tested valves cast from certified, domestically poured alloys significantly reduces the risk of fugitive emissions and catastrophic piping failures.

Edited by Lekshman Ramdas, Induportals editor – adapted by AI.

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