Marshall went to a conference in Houston last night, and the topic was about how the oil and gas industry's new method of fracking is affecting the foundry industry. As a refresher, Marshall is majoring in Industrial Technology--Manufacturing Technology at Texas State University, and will graduate in May 2014. Last semester he took a foundry course and fell in love with it. He's less interested in bring the guy who pours the molten metal into sand molds, and more ambitious in becoming an engineer in the foundry industry. Back on track now, the speaker basically spoke about how fracking works and that is requires a lot of sand. The oil companies are buying and using more than all the sand that the foundry industry around the entire world uses in a given year. With the demand for sand on the rise, so are the costs, which are also affecting foundries. Very interesting for business leaders, and informative for people like my husband who want to know more about the industry.
The real reason Marshall went was to rub elbows with the owners, managers and other representatives of foundry companies here in Texas. He met up with this Lufkin contact Ray, who gave him a tour of their foundry facility back in December. Ray was with two other Lufkin reps, one of whom Marshall said looked to be in upper management. Marshall asked him what would his chances be of gaining employment with Lufkin after college and going to an overseas location (such as Canada or Argentina). Apparently the guy's response was "pretty good," because most Americans don't want to move out of the country, and the people that they do want to go overseas would fill management positions. This is good news for us because we'd consider going to Canada or Argentina. They have a Romania facility...um, not so much.
Marshall so was told some anecdotes about how people in upper management in the foundry business are literally dying off. It's becoming more and more common for someone in their late 20s or 30s being a general manager or chief of operations of a foundry. Wow! I don't think Marshall could handle the stress of such a position, but he'd be an excellent engineer or engineering manager, which would be a huge asset to the GM. What does this all boil down to for us? First, it seems that the people Marshall has spoken with at these types of conferences are all very patient. They are completely fine with keeping in touch with him and getting together again when he graduates (2.5 years away). This is amazing in my eyes. In addition to this, we are both feeling more confident that Marshall could go into contract with a company probably the fall of 2013 and start working for them after graduating the following May.
I know my husband will be very successful at whatever he puts his heart into, and I believe the foundry industry is at a point where they would snatch him up in a heartbeat. Hopefully he'll enjoy it and become a leader, creating new processes, even inventing new tools (Marshall loves to invent things) that would be applicable to foundry work. I'm very content right now with this door we may choose to enter one day.
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