BY: Bob Glenn, Editor and Publisher
In early 2024, Sahm Splice GmbH(Bremerhaven, Germany) and CECA LLC (Ripley, Mississippi, USA) launched the joint venture Sahm Splice USA, LLC. The joint venture has been in place for most of the year as the company refines its process for serving their existing customers, and they are now eager to share more about how they plan to serve North American customers and prospects in the future.
Joint Venture Partner – SAHM Splice
Sahm Splice manufactures and distributes products related to mechanical splicing of wire rope. That includes a wide range of ferrules made from aluminum, copper, steel and stainless steel, as well as a complete line of swaging machines, test beds, cutting & annealing machines and different tools. The company dates back to 1961, and today sells in over 50 countries through affiliates in France and Great Britain and distributors worldwide. Their 40+ employees sell more than 60 million ferrules each year, and have built more than 1,800 swaging machines. Related support services for their equipment includes training, calibration, refurbishment, and repair.
Notably, Sahm’s heritage extends back well beyond the company’s current form. As a port city, Bremerhaven has a distinguished history in shipbuilding and a long succession of businesses encompassing related engineering and trades. Most notably, the historic Tecklenborg Shipyard was founded in 1845 and grew to employ 4,300 at its peak. From that shipyard, the rigging shop Tecklenborg Kegel GmbH was founded in 1928 and continues today under ownership of the same family as Sahm Splice. The sister companies maintain a close working relationship giving Sahm Splice opportunities to gain immediate insight from the rigging shop floor.
While wire rope and rigging shops are the primary market for Sahm Splice’s products, they also have customers who serve diverse sectors such as fishing, mining, construction, architecture, and theater and stage technology. With the exception of Flemish Eye Sleeves, all of their products are manufactured at their facility in Germany.
Apart from swaging machines, the company emphasizes that they have been quite successful with their very accurate, robust and easy-to-use test beds. They have delivered test machines to a number of leading names around the rigging industry, including Lift-It Manufacturing. Mike Gelskey, CEO at Lift-It, told us that, “We are beyond impressed with our Sahm Test Bed, three years later. Our machine functions as it did on day one. From the engineering support of special fitting(s), custom test pins sizes, to the delivery and setup, the software interface etc. and the list goes on, we have been delighted with every facet of the process which has exceeded our expectations!”
Joint Venture Partner – CECA Forge
CECA Forge – CECA stands for Cold Extrusion Company of America – is a market leader in the field of impact extrusion. Built over a 42-year history, the family-owned company has operated in its current location for more than a decade. Their facility covers 130,000 square feet under roof, and they are continuously updating their plant with state-of-the-art computer-aided manufacturing and office processes to meet the changing needs of their customers.
Metal products produced through cold extrusion have enhanced strength, making them well suited to load-bearing applications. The process also delivers products with extremely uniform dimensions, enabling these products to meet very precise specifications. The high pressures required for the process result in a superior finished surface free of imperfections. Cold extrusion also enhances corrosion resistance as it results in a more homogenous internal structure, leaving fewer defects and impurities where corrosion might begin.
From an operational standpoint, once the correct tool and die set up is complete, cold extrusion is a highly repeatable process with short cycle times. The dimensions and mechanical properties of the items produced will remain stable, and the process uses material efficiently with very little waste product.
Of course, getting consistent high-quality output from a process like this requires carefully managing what goes in. CECA uses only domestically produced bar which they cut – very precisely – and heat treat in-house. Tooling and equipment is obviously a major investment, and the company rebuilds presses and produces all of its own tool and die. They have also heavily invested in automation, perhaps most notably in their machine shop. Taken together, this reflects a remarkable degree of knowledge about, and control over, their entire operating process. The focus on continuous improvement is readily seen throughout their facility.
The company holds both ISO 9001:2015 and API Spec Q1 10th Edition certifications, with the latter being specific to product manufacturers serving the oil and gas industry. On our visit to CECA, President Mark Floyd’s commitment to continuous improvement was readily evident – and obviously top-of-mind for him – as he discussed modifications to the facility underway and in planning in nearly every part of their plant. These included enhancements to the receiving dock, complete overhauls of forging equipment on the floor, and the addition of acrylic paint on the roof to better manage temperature throughout the building.
CECA serves customers across a variety of industries and applications. They cold form and machine millions of components for the oil and gas industry, including pipe fittings and couplings where part failure would be a high risk, high cost event. They also supply a wide variety of components to users serving agricultural and construction applications. In the lifting and rigging sector, they are a leading manufacturer of cold formed sleeves, ferrules and buttons. They also serve other consumer and industrial applications.
The Joint Venture
Sahm Splice has been a customer of CECA for more than a decade. All of their Flemish Eye sleeves have been made by CECA and provided to SAHM on a private label basis and distributed worldwide. Given that existing business relationship, CECA was a logical place to start when Sahm Splice began exploring the establishment of a footprint in the United States to expand sales and provide better service. The six-to-nine-hour time difference between Germany and the United States impedes a speedy response to customer queries, highlighting the need to have support resources close at hand as they seek further growth.
Arne, Niemann, CEO of SAHM SPLICE GmbH, explains, “It is always easier to start something if you have a partner in that country who knows the regulations and (market) conditions. We have been in the industry thanks to the AWRF (Associated Wire Rope Fabricators), so we know a lot of customers and potential customers. But for us, it was really helpful to have someone with all this technical knowledge.” He adds that CECA, “is not only a supplier, this is really a long term business relationship that we have. We trust each other.”
As far as the location is concerned, Ripley, Mississippi is very close to Memphis (TN) and very centrally located within the USA. Memphis is the main hub for FedEx and one of the top logistics locations in the United States. The Ripley area – not nearly as remote as it might seem on a map – hosts a variety of other manufacturing businesses as well.
“We’re actually very centralized for the industries we serve.” Explained Mark Floyd, President of CECA. “As far as LTL or full truckload, we’re only 12 hours from Houston,” and well-situated to serve customers in the Midwest and both coasts as well.
SAHM SPLICE USA
To handle day-to-day activities for the joint venture, Omar Madrigal has been brought on board in Ripley to serve as Office Manager. A U.S: Marine Corps veteran, Madrigal has extensive hands-on experience with a variety of lifting equipment, and began his civilian career in manufacturing with CECA. He serves as the first point of contact for customers, providing quotes, confirming orders and coordinating timely product shipments. He also speaks Spanish for any North American customers more comfortable doing so as well.
The combination of skills and products the joint venture is assembling will provide a one-stop shop for wire rope terminations. Existing CECA customers benefit from a greater product variety, as all SAHM products are now available. Before, CECA was only offering Flemish Eye sleeves, choker ferrules and buttons. Sahm Splice customers benefit from having a significant stock of their products onshore and ready to ship.
Sahm Splice currently has three machines powered to demonstrate on the floor in the Ripley warehouse, a 450-ton swager, an 800-ton swager and a 1225 annealing and cutting machine plus several more for immediate sale. Julian Thomas – Vice President of Sales explains that these specific machines – quite a few of which are already at work in the U.S. market, “are easy to operate, really robust. They are made in Germany in our own machine-building department in Bremerhaven. They are available for sale, and we are open to show them to our customers.”
While more detailed technical support is provided by Sahm’s personnel in Bremerhaven, CECA has highly capable technicians onsite who are currently training to provide a wide range of maintenance services to Sahm’s customers.
CECA’s Mark Floyd sums it up: “The big thing we just want everybody to understand is that we’re still making our own products. SAHM are still making theirs in Germany, and CECA is still making our own products, not importing them. (Our customers) are still getting the same quality from both companies that they are used to. They’re just going to get more support.”
Visit www.sahm-splice.com and www.cecaforge.com to learn more.
