Manufacturers discuss the outlook for gear manufacturing in 2025
Matthew Jaster, as part of his article for Gear Technology magazine, interviewed three large gear manufacturers, Atlanta Gear Works, Croix Gears and Forest City Gear, to get their views on the state of the gear industry in 2025.
All these companies are US manufacturers but many of the opportunities and challenges will be common to gear manufacturers worldwide.
There are a few key take outs that will apply to any gear manufacturer.
The past few years have seen some incredible head winds with Covid, Geo-Politics and Labour markets – all having an impact on business.
For Forest City Gear, diversity in the market is important “FCG is very intentional in not letting any individual customer, or even end market, take too big of chunk of gross sales. As we saw through COVID, diversification is key to weathering the storm. While putting all your eggs in one basket might make you a lot more efficient (and a lot more money in the short term), it’s just too risky an approach for us,”said Kika Young, President of Forest City Gears.
Ruthie Johnston, CEO, Croix Gears – is keeping a close eye on potential mergers and acquisitions and gear companies looking for potential buyers in 2025. “I’m curious what succession will look like” said Johnston. “There are so many buyers out there today”.
Staffing continues to be a major challenge. There are several initiatives being employed linking with educational establishments to encourage engineering graduates to put gear manufacturing on their ‘list’.
Emerging technologies with robotics, AI, additive manufacturing and the use of Cobots have differing levels of take-up depending on the manufacturers – with reasons and attitudes explained in the article.
There is a lot more insight to be gained, many of the issues are tackled by other manufacturers worldwide – so it may be interesting to see how these companies are adapting.