Leading the Way in High-Temp Applications

Fedmet Resources
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Fedmet Resources Corporation is a global leader in the demanding world of quality engineered products and services for high-temperature applications. Working for a range of clients in the steel, iron, and non-ferrous industries, the company prides itself on providing the highest-quality products manufactured from only the best raw materials.
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Fedmet’s team of dedicated and experienced engineers is able to offer all customers a range of state-of-the-art products which help to improve safety and help clients gain a competitive advantage through lower costs, better performance, and energy savings.

Since its founding over two decades ago, Fedmet has grown to have over two dozen warehouse facilities located across Canada, the United States, Mexico and South America. The company remains committed to its clients by providing outstanding service. With so many years of cumulative experience and knowledge, Fedmet supplies solutions for maximum output, safety, and the assurance of on-time product delivery.

Mark Mattar, President of Fedmet Resources, earned a degree in Ceramic Engineering from the acclaimed Alfred University in Western New York and was soon working at the United States Steel Corporation, better known as U.S. Steel. While employed as a process engineer working in process improvement with an emphasis on refractories, that Mattar learned a great deal about working with molten steel and its high-temperature applications.

“The interesting thing about steel production is that, when you are melting steel at 3000° Fahrenheit, you can’t melt steel in a big steel pot – it has to have a ceramic or brick lining in it – and things go very badly when the brick lining fails, or things don’t perform properly. Having 200 or 300 tons of liquid steel at 3,000°F – not where you want it – is very problematic. It is rare but, unfortunately, it is not rare enough. A breach can burn down an entire piece of equipment, so it is crucial the right product is in the right application.”
It was this experience at U.S. Steel and Veitscher Magnesit Werke which helped lead Mattar to start his own company in 1990. With a strong set of core values, Fedmet remains committed to its many customers – such as cement and metal foundries – which work in the world of high temperatures.

Initially importing the bricks and other products from Europe, Mattar realized that, due to costs, bricks would soon be brought out of China. At the time, China was largely virgin territory for the exportation of magnesia carbon bricks to the United States and Canada. “At that point, nobody had done it before. So, I essentially took a two week vacation and flew to China, started poking around and found there actually were good suppliers in China.”

It was Mark Mattar’s ingenuity that sparked the creation of Fedmet in 1990. Prior to that time, engineer and businessman Mattar had recognized the demand for magnesia carbon bricks in North America’s high-temperature marketplace. Containing magnesia and flake graphite, the bricks have excellent thermal shock properties and are corrosion-resistant.

Soon, this led to not only the importation of bricks, but slide gates, copper mold tubes, electrodes and other products.

Design and Engineering Expertise
Fedmet is able to access a vast number of global resources to deliver highly innovative solutions, experience, and exceptional customer service to all its clients. Fedmet designs the products with their team of talented designers and engineers. The products are manufactured in the United States, Canada, Asia, Spain, Slovakia, and Slovenia. To ensure the highest quality products, the company has seven full-time quality control engineers. All products are thoroughly inspected prior to being shipped to any of its customers in its key markets, namely North, Central and South America.

The company has an office in Delaware with a branch office in Montréal, Canada. In addition to these offices, many employees work remotely near their customers and suppliers throughout Asia, North, Central, and South America. “We really embraced the Internet early on and set the company up as a virtual office, where sales and service staff can work remotely. The only place where we need physical staff is to take care of our transportation logistics, our quotations and our financials. Those functions are handled out of our Montréal office and some of the logistics are handled out of our office in China. The rest of us communicate via telephone and/or the Internet.”

“A company is only as great as a people who work for it, and I am very fortunate that I have great dedicated people working with me,” says Mattar. “Without the great people I have working with me, the company would never be successful and would long ago be out of business.”

Fedmet TKEnergizer™
The company provides clients with a wide range of products including: refractory brick, flow control refractory brick, stirring plugs and equipment, EBT and ladle sands, ingot pouring tile and hot tops, copper mold tubes, and premium electrodes.

Fedmet is constantly on the cutting edge of innovation. The company’s latest offering is an industrial burner system that Fedmet named the TKEnergizer™ in 2012, standing for ‘Thermal Kinetic Energizer’. In industrial heating applications, the Thermal Kinetic Energizer is a dramatically different system used to replace conventional, and often inefficient, gas burners.

Using just a small amount of natural gas compared to old-fashioned burners, the TKEnergizer™ powers a stream of molecules resulting in the direct transfer of kinetic energy to heat. This produces uniform heating within the vessel, heat exchange system or work piece while at the same time dramatically reducing harmful emissions that come with using conventional gas burner systems.

For manufacturers using ovens, furnaces, incinerators, kilns or pre-heaters/refractory heaters, the TKEnergizer™ is nothing short of an industrial game-changer. As many industries are aware, energy costs in sectors such as the steel industry account for anywhere from fifteen to twenty per cent of total manufacturing costs. Using significantly less gas and working more effectively for shorter periods of time, the TKEnergizer™ results in far less fuel consumption and helps to lower overall costs.

“It is all based on velocity,” Mattar says. “The velocity of the energy coming out of the energizer is much higher than the velocity of energy that comes out of the conventional burner.”

The patented TKEnergizer™ technology is poised to change Fedmet in the coming years. The company is the only one with the rights to sell and service the U.S. compliant technology to the steel industry in the Americas.

With an established reputation for innovation, profitable and safe solutions, and unparalleled expertise working with clients for all high-temperature applications in the iron, steel and non-ferrous industries, Fedmet continues to provide all customers with high quality products.

Mattar says that above all, Fedmet’s greatest asset is its staff: “Product is important, but having the right people, getting the right product in the right application, and then servicing it is every bit as important as the right product. You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, if our salesmen aren’t out selling it or our service people aren’t installing it properly, there is no business. Product is important, but people are more important.”

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