Northrhine Westfalia-based refractory specialist VGH Viktoria Garten Hüttenindustriebedarf AG today announces the opening of a subsidiary in North America. VGH America LLC is based in Ambridge, Pennsylvania just outside of Pittsburgh and will provide complete refractory solutions to the high temperature metals, alloys and glass industries. This includes refractory products, equipment and certain raw materials.

With the founding of VGH America, VGH is extending its international market coverage and reinforcing existing business in the United States as well as launching activities to gain new business partners. John Karson, CEO of VGH America, comments: “VGH with its brands theramer, Interfull and Petronix covers the whole steel-making process with very innovative, competitive and often unique refractory products and machinery. We see a great potential for rolling out new projects and putting this German know-how into practice in our home market.” In order to achieve customer satisfaction, strong teams within the VGH Group will be focusing on the total concept of product application, R&D, engineering, and logistics.

Kieran Sheahan, Business and Procurement & Sales Director at VGH, says: “The opening of VGH America is a major step for VGH in pursuing its goal to use the synergies VGH has in worldwide markets. VGH has accelerated its market acceptance in North America tremendously and we are already exploring new and exciting territories, from which, we are convinced, our the whole VGH operation will profit.”

VGH has headquarters in Schwelm, Germany but has subsidiaries in Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Spain and China. The new North American subsidiary will cover a customer base in the USA and Canada.