The world is changing

There was a report in The Monty magazine that Bodycote had sold 10  plants in France. One of those plants was Lagny sur Marne. I imported two furnaces from there a long time ago, an Ipsen VTTC 524 and a B64TH oil quenching plant equipped with plasma carburizing. But we never got the plasma running. But both furnaces did their job, the Ipsen one better, the B64TH was something of a prototype from BMI, and let’s face it, this furnace used up an incredible amount of money on repairs due to constant problems with the loading mechanism. Standa Dostál, he could tell. Well, it’s gone now..

However, I spent almost 20 years with Bodycote, from 1999 to 2018, and Bodycote always bought and expanded. Then, although it restructured the plants, it never sold them. I personally participated in the closure of Modřice, our  plant at Poclain Hydraulics in Brno, the operation in Škoda in Pilsen, or the entire Příbram. What could not be moved somewhere ended up in the scrap heap. There was no interest in encouraging competition by offering unnecessary equipment.

So a change that I fully understand from today’s perspective. And from a human perspective, a beautiful gesture. Anyone who has never closed a plant and laid off people with whom they worked, lived, for better or for worse, will not understand.

Jiří Stanislav

December 2, 2025