181 vacuum furnaces. More than you would expect?
So I counted that we have 181 vacuum furnaces in Czechia and Slovakia. That’s my number, the reality will probably be slightly higher, because I can’t know everything.
Once, as Bodycote, I argued that the potential of the vacuum furnace market is tied to the sale of steel, especially for hot work. There was a simple rule at Bodycote. In order for a vacuum furnace to be profitable, it must provide us with an annual turnover in the amount of the purchase price. That is, if we have a furnace for 10 mil. We must also have a turnover of 10 million CZK on the furnace. per year. However, because the costs in CZ and SK are lower than in the rest of the world, we applied a coefficient of 0.8.
Obr.č. 1 – Počet vakuových pecí dle výrobců … zvýraznil jsem jen ty co zastupuji. ECM a TAV mají podíl na trhu 17,8%.
At that time, I estimated that 18,000 tons of steel for hot work, type H11, H13, Dievar, etc., were sold annually in CZ and SK. Because a typical vacuum single-chamber quenching furnace with 10 bar overpressure, with a size of 699 will cost some 15 million today. (600 k€), we must have an effective turnover of CZK 12 million. With an average price for hardening and two tempering sessions of CZK 60/kg (€2.5/kg), it is necessary to process 200 tons of steel per year, about 16.7 tons per month.
So if I divide the total steel sales of 18,000 tons by the output of one furnace, I need 90 vacuum furnaces for the hot work tool sector alone.
However, we can see from the graph that this segment accounts for only 28% of the total number of furnaces. There are only 48 of them. If I add to this the general heat treatment market of 18%, which together represents the majority of commercial heat treatment plants in CZ and Slovakia, then we are at number 79 furnaces. That’s very close to the number 90. This market segment therefore seems to be exhausted.
Obr.č. 2 – Podíl vakuových pecí na jednotlivých segmentech trhu
And the remaining ones? Right behind tooling and general engineering are LPC and Aerospace. However, because, unless some miracle happens, CZ and SK are not a major manufacturer of OEM aircraft equipment, the growth of this market will be very gradual and will only cover the gradually increasing capacities of Tier 2 manufacturers. We simply miss Rzeszow.
So what remains is LPC and maybe BRAZING, where the demand for coolers is growing. But the coolers for the batteries are mostly made of aluminum, and so far the CAB (Controlled Atmosphere Brazing) technology dominates there, not VAB (Vacuum Aluminum Brazing).
As far as 3D printing is concerned, vacuum furnaces are completely absent today. With one well-known exception, the roughly 40 metal printers that I register in CZ do not have any vacuum furnace available, so the owners rely either on the cooperation of post-processing or on a miracle.
As for the age of the furnaces, it will be between 10 and 20 years on average. However, historical furnaces with an age of over 50 years also survive. However, as energy prices are falling, the energy mix is also declining and thus the impact on emissions, mass pressure to upgrade furnaces cannot be expected here either.
The list of furnace manufacturers supplied to CZ and Slovakia shows that many of them no longer exist (Kopp, Degussa, Rubig, ZEZ), and Ipsen, by moving the vacuum to the USA, completely left this market. And so there are only 5 of them left who have any significance or growth potential-
What to say in conclusion? 181 vacuum furnaces are not a few. But there will be even more classic multi-purpose ones that are waiting for some kind of impetus. The loss of the automotive industry from the transition to electromobility is so great that many furnaces are now shut down. And not because there is no other job. These furnaces, unlike vacuum furnaces with LPC, lack flexibility. They cannot harden tools, they cannot make brazing, recrystallize stainless steels, etc. Simply, the world has changed fundamentally and their usability is questionable.
Jiří Stanislav
February 16, 2026
