The Non-Ferrous Founders' Society

NFFS provides a wide variety of membership benefits and services, including written regulatory compliance programs, newsletters, foundry specific safety training programs, economic reports, industry advocacy and representation, members- only affinity programs, and customer market development activities. NFFS often times submits written comments and oral testimony on behalf of the industry during the development of new and revised regulations affecting its members, and actively advocates on behalf of the industry. Recently, Business View Magazine spoke with Jerrod Weaver, Executive Director of the NFFS to find out more about the organization. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation, plus additional written material that Weaver supplied. BVM: Can you talk about the history of the Society, why and how it got started, and what its current mandate is, today? Weaver: “In January 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Production Board (WPB) with Executive Order 9024. The national WPB’s primary task was converting civilian industry to war production. It also assigned priorities and allocated scarce materials such as steel, aluminum, copper and rubber, prohibited nonessential industrial production such as nylons and refrigerators, controlled wages and prices, and mobilized the people through patriotic messages and events such as scrap drives. “One of the things that happened was that the industry was negatively impacted because it had an inability to secure copper to produce not only the war production needs, but also the commercial needs of the U.S. economy. “Another challenge facing foundries was the Office of Price Administration (OPA), established in 1941. The OPA had the power to place ceilings on all prices except agricultural commodities, and to ration scarce supplies of other items, including metals. In 1943, the OPA instituted a $0.015 uniform price reduction on all castings to “continue a situation in which prices were definitely known and knowable to purchasers.” Foundries were being dictated a price reduction in an environment where the raw materials, such as scrap and ingot, did not decrease in cost. This presented an untenable situation for foundries, and many foundries were placed at great risk of economic harm and/or failure. “In turn, non-ferrous foundries organized into what became NFFS to represent their collective interests. NFFS first organized on April 28, 1943 at the Statler Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. Its main purpose, at the time, was to work directly with the War Production Board to help non-ferrous foundries obtain critical supplies of scrap and ingot metal for casting production needs, and to represent the industry to the OPA to try and protect the industry from damaging economic policies. “NFFS officially incorporated as a not-for-profit trade association on August 18th, 1945 in the State of Illinois. Offices were originally located in downtown Chicago. The offices were relocated to Cleveland, Ohio during the 1960s, and returned back to Illinois in the 1970s. We moved to Park Ridge in 1998, and at the end of June 2019 we relocated our offices to Sturgis, Michigan. “From its inception, NFFS was created to assist non-ferrous foundries in dealing with government THE NON-FERROUS FOUNDERS ’ SOC I ETY pictured below Executive Director of the NFFS, Jerrod Weaver