Red Net Jiahe Branch reported on May 8 (Correspondent: Li Jingyu is in Tian Xuanyu and Liu Zhixi) In recent years, Jiahe County has taken the central ecological and environmental protection inspection as an opportunity to promote, scientifically plan at a high level, high frequency dispatch, strengthen guidance, efficient service, and strict acceptance, and has worked hard on “precise pollution control” and fully promote the transformation and upgrading of Jiahe County's foundry industry.
Jiahe prospered because of casting and flourished because of casting. It is known as the capital of Jiangnan and the small town of fine casting in China. Jiahe Casting started in the Qin and Han Dynasties, traveled through thousands of years, evolved iteratively, and formed a “one main and one special” industrial pattern dominated by casting and characterized by equipment manufacturing in the high-tech zone. The county produces more than 1 million tons of castings and 150 million precision hardware pieces annually, accounting for 30% of the province's casting production and 6% of the casting production of “one city and six provinces” in Jiangnan. It ranks first in Hunan Province in the industrial scale. The entire machine equipment includes CNC machine tools, knitting machines, injection molding machines, special purpose vehicles and other fields. It has 1 national-level small giant enterprise, 30 high-tech enterprises, 11 provincial-level “specialized, specialized and innovative” enterprises, and 757 patents of various types.
Since the second round of central ecological and environmental protection inspections were assigned to the problems reported by the second round of central ecological and environmental protection inspections on July 16, 2021, the Jiahe County Party Committee and County Government have attached great importance to the development and future of the casting industry, and have truly regarded the environmental protection rectification of the casting industry as an important test for the implementation of the “Two Mountains” theory, grasped it as an important opportunity to promote the transformation and upgrading of the casting industry in Jiahe County, and implemented it as a major political task in the past five years. Strictly follow the spirit of the instructions of the central, provincial and municipal governments, and fully promote the rectification of prominent environmental problems in the casting industry. The “Jiahe County Casting Industry Second Round of Central Environmental Protection Inspection” and the “Comprehensive Remediation Plan for Casting Enterprises on-site technical transformation and improvement” were formulated and issued, and the Provincial Academy of Environmental Sciences was invited to formulate the “Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Remediation of Ecological Environment Protection in the Casting Industry in Jiahe County”; the county's main leaders “scheduled one month”, and the County Remediation Office “scheduled one week, inspect one week” regularly invited experts from the Provincial Academy of Environmental Sciences to provide assistance and guidance in the local rectification enterprises; more than 80,000 square meters of standard factory buildings in green intelligent casting industrial park were built. As of May 4, 2025, the county's foundry enterprises have been integrated and closed from 135 when inspected to 70 now, including 34 in Tantang Industrial Park, 23 within 3 square kilometers of the “Qingzhu Town” in Tang Village, and 13 in Zhuquan, Yuanjia and Longtan towns. 65 companies have been closed and withdrawn, and 16 new casting companies have been built. Since the acceptance work was launched in February 2025, 70 retained casting companies and 62 have submitted acceptance applications, and eight batches of county-level acceptance have been carried out, and the acceptance work has achieved full coverage. Among them, 27 enterprises have met the standards in county-level acceptance.
In the factory of Zhongyida Foundry Co., Ltd., the reporter operated the company's data management MES system, which can assign codes to each casting product and realize full-process tracking, which not only reduces labor but also improves efficiency.
Zhongyida Company is currently the only enterprise in Jiahe County that has successfully established a B-level environmental protection enterprise and is also a benchmark project for digital transformation of provincial manufacturing. Being able to stand out from a number of “scattered and dirty” casting companies in the park, Zhongyida took the lead in adopting two automated production lines: disappearing mold automation production line and wood mold resin sand process automation production line. Industrial robots automatically make ingredients, weigh, reduce manual operation in a closed environment, and are green and environmentally friendly.
The newly applied mobile sand mixer does not need to replace the mold, which changes the previous artificial model of sand turning, handling and pouring, not only reduces waste gas emissions, but also improves the process, killing two birds with one stone. In addition, the company is equipped with an automated sand treatment system, with the recycling rate of old sand reaching more than 95%, and the resources are recycled.
Similarly, in the machining workshop of Feiheng Alloy Casting Co., Ltd., environmental protection equipment is operating. Feiheng is a foundry enterprise integrating R&D, molds, and casting processing. It used to be a serious environmental pollution problem. Now the company has replaced various domestic advanced production lines such as modified glass production lines and disappearing mold production lines. It has also improved the VOC collection system of particulate matter collection and casting area in the smelting area, sand falling area, shot blasting area, grinding area and other workstations. It has been rated as a national specialized and new “little giant” enterprise.
In the Hongxing Foundry Co., Ltd. in Chetou Community, Zhuquan Town, the production workshop is completely renewed. The equipment, raw materials, products, etc. in the workshop are placed in an orderly manner, and the environment is clean and tidy. It is hard to imagine that scrap iron is piled up in the open air and sand and dust are flying all over the sky. What is black is that some black gravel dust produced during the casting process of casting the pig iron covers the ground, and the waste gas is discharged without organization and treatment. The workers are completely exposed to a high-pollution environment.
“Our company was included in the key rectification. In the past, my ideas and concepts did not change. I believed that where would there be clean in casting? Production is the most important thing. Which waste gases will always be polluted. It is impossible to say that they would not produce in order not to discharge, and it cannot be avoided. Later, the dust became increasingly heavy, which affected production. I replaced new environmental protection equipment and improved according to the county's rectification requirements. In fact, the production was more orderly, the workers were more comfortable, and the product quality was more guaranteed. The efficiency was improved a lot, and a series of advantages were revealed.” Lei Lingyun, general manager of Hongxing Casting Co., Ltd., said.