Appleton Group’s South Milwaukee metal casting foundry has been honored with the prestigious 2025 Energy Efficiency Excellence Award by Focus on Energy®, recognizing it for innovation in manufacturing. Focus on Energy, Wisconsin’s state energy efficiency program, acknowledges statewide organizations for their outstanding energy efficiency achievements and sustainable practices.
The South Milwaukee foundry manufactures electrical fittings, enclosures and other cast products under the Appleton™ and O-Z/Gedney™ brands within the Emerson portfolio. As one of this year’s 11 Focus on Energy award recipients, the South Milwaukee foundry demonstrates how heavy industrial operations can lower expenses, improve the environment, and boost regional economies. While more than a century old, the foundry is stocked with state-of-the-art modern equipment and is a key part of Appleton Group’s supply chain, producing an estimated 15,000,000 castings annually.
Appleton Group worked with Focus on Energy and local utilities to cut energy waste, lower operating costs, and strengthen its long-term sustainability in the South Milwaukee foundry. At the center of the initiative was the optimization of the facility’s heating system through the implementation of a new building management system (BMS). This project was supported by Focus on Energy which provided technical oversight of scoping and design. Focus on Energy also helped the foundry capitalize on a custom utility project grant that greatly boosted project economics, saving ratepayers money by mitigating the cost of future infrastructure buildout.
The new BMS enables precise control and monitoring of comfort heating and cooling systems, helping the South Milwaukee foundry eliminate long periods of overheating that were accentuated by radiant heat from foundry operations, and by reducing temperature setpoints outside of operational hours. Natural gas consumption was slashed by an impressive 20%, while the emissions footprint was trimmed by 9%. Appleton Group realized $127,000 year-over-year savings in natural gas costs at a net project cost of $118,000, resulting in an effective payback period of under one year.
But the BMS is only one part of Appleton Group’s ambitious energy efficiency goals for the foundry. Since 2017, it has replaced channel furnaces with cordless induction melting furnaces and retrofitted over 800 fluorescent lights with Appleton Industrial LED fixtures. Combined, the energy improvements save the facility over 10,000 megawatt-hours (MWh), 65,000 million British thermal units (MMBtu) and $1 million in energy costs annually. The team also identified nearly $350,000 in energy-related incentives throughout this period. In all, total energy consumption and emissions have been cut by about a third since 2017, drastically reducing emissions and operating expenses.
Earlier this year, the South Milwaukee foundry received the 2025 Better Project Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 2019, the facility earned the Plant Engineering Award by the American Foundry Society for innovation and commitment to continuous improvement.
