Lenape Forged Products, Corp

Lenape Forged Products Corporation is a place where limits disappear. Our people’s ability to think and create beyond our client’s expectations has allowed us to achieve what others have said was impossible.Our management has encouraged and foster an atmosphere where risk taking is encouraged and creativity has become a norm. Thanks to this progressive attitude, we have become participants and leaders in new markets that were not in existence when this business started. Our products now plunge to the deepest depths of the oceans on submarines and deep submersibles, blast through the atmosphere on spacecraft, and probe the depths of the earth for oil.

HISTORY

The family-owned business once known as Lenape Hydraulic Pressing and Forging Company has grown and evolved over many decades. It has changed ownership a number of times during its 90-plus years of existence and today is called the Lenape Forged Products Corporation. The facility has a long and interesting history, but has consistently been known as the place where complex and difficult forgings could be created. This created a well-earned reputation for quality and innovation.Lenape Forged Products Corporation has reinvested in the facilities incorporating the latest in state-of-the-art technology and equipment. Forging presses have been re-built to make forging more precise and controlled. All allowing Lenape to maintain its high levels of quality and stringent delivery standards.

• At our beginnings, the people at Lenape developed a unique approach to pressure vessel connections. This put Lenape on the map.
• Lenape increased its business slowly through forgings for the power generation industry, which eventually led to work in the nuclear segment of that industry. During the 1950s, Lenape became a leader in reinforced branch connections for piping and pressure vessels.
• The 1960s brought major expansion to the facility including the addition of more than 135,000 square feet of production and high-capacity equipment. Lenape was acquired by Gulf+Western Manufacturing Company. This publicly traded company invested in the plant and changed some of the basic processes that scaled up the operation. This time period also saw Lenape beginning its work for the Defense industry.
• The 1970s saw Lenape improving techniques to increase productivity and lower production costs. This was a keystone in terms of building our reputation for quality. In the late 70’s, Lenape dramatically increased its footprint in the defense industry.
• 1983 was a watershed time for Lenape as a group of Lenape managers negotiated a buyout program from Gulf+Western that made Lenape a privately held business once again with local control. Also in the 1980s, Lenape introduce the modular die concept that allowed Lenape to use existing tooling to form multiple shapes in the forging process and to maintain a cost savings for its clients.
• The 1990s saw investment in computerization as Lenape added microprocessor controls to much of its machining equipment making it the latest in technology at the time. This time period also saw increased activity by Lenape in several key markets including defense industry, the refining/pipeline industry, and the high-tech computer chip industry where it provided exotic metals production.
• In the 2000s, Lenape saw two sets of new ownership. The first was uneventful. The second came in the mid-2000 decade which resulted in the current Lenape Forged Products Corporation. The company has seen a resurgence of investment in its facilities and a level of backlog that it hasn’t experienced in over 20 years. This is due to a combination of management skill, capital investment and dedicated interest to the forging industry, and to advancing the facility to the point of becoming nearly a one-of-a-kind resource.

PRODUCTS

Lenape Forged Products Corporation manufactures two basic groups of products—custom-forged components & assemblies, and standard products which are inventoried.The bulk of Lenape’s business involves the manufacture of custom forgings. The forgings are made to customer specifications in our 135,000 square foot manufacturing plant in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The plant can handle input weights up to 21 tons and the plant has a variety of forging presses, the largest has a capacity of 5,000 tons. Lenape has an extensive inventory of dies that can be used to create a wide array of forging configurations. The plant has successfully made complex and difficult-to-make forgings in a variety of materials—virtually any shape and configuration.Standard products at Lenape comprise several types of manways. These manways are forged in advance and kept in inventory for quick shipment. They include elliptical manways, flat machined high pressure manways and custom-designed quick opening manways.

CAPABILITIES

Lenape Forged Products Corporation has become the go-to source for many well-known firms. We are known not just for quality, but for creating custom products efficiently and cost effectively as well as creating standard products that are the bench-marks for performance in many industries.Our attention to detail and quality prevails in all stages of production. That is because our forgings are created under one roof—made by our people with a production systems that does everything within our own facilities where we control every aspect of production.From the moment a customer first talks to us about their requirements until the final product is inspected, tested and packed for shipping, the product never leaves our premises. And that means there's no opportunity for quality failures.