
The summer season is in full swing; it seems that nothing is happening. But it is only an illusion. The Meduna vacuum heat treatment plant is buying INDURA from ing. Josef Vystrčil. After last year’s acquisition of Narex Praha by Galvamet, this is the second case of expansion of family heat treatment business in the Czech Republic.
And why am I interested in this? It is also related to my history at Bodycote. Around 2008, the intention was to transfer the Corr-I-dur technology, applied to ball pins manufactured in TRW Dačice, from Germany to the Czech Republic. At that time, Josef Vystrčil was the head of the TRW heat treatment department in Dačice.
There were several options, the first was that we would create an in-house plant directly in Dačice and apply there what was done in Ludenscheid. And so, it somehow happened that TRW closed the heat treatment plant, Josef Vystrčil became independent and founded his INDURA. But Bodycote withdrew from the plan in Dačice, saying that it would transfer this technology to Brno, then to Liberec, and finally to Prague. But that is another story.
Until this year, Josef Vystrčil maintained his business and honestly expanded it, now it is at the Meduna family.
Will it change anything on the market? Probably not. Induction hardening is a relatively energy-efficient technology, but it is demanding on human operation or automation. And that is a problem. I was raised to believe that this is the main handicap of this technology.
Illustrative image from Adobe Firefly
Jiří Stanislav
August 10, 2025