Worthington closing plant where scuba cylinders are manufactured

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I wonder who will step up to replace them in the market. Perhaps Faber or Hieser if there is to be no North American made? Hope to find out soon.

Worthington bought the old Jos Heiser plant in Austria many years ago and have all but completely stopped Scuba Cylinder production there, this basically left Faber as the dominant manufacturer of Scuba cylinders for a substantial time now in the international market.

 

[Leadking]

That is what makes all this interesting to watch. Norris will get the tooling. Two questions remain,

will they make them and who will distribute them?

 

[Wookie]

That is what makes all this interesting to watch. Norris will get the tooling. Two questions remain,

will they make them and who will distribute them?

You know you're just itching to get back in.

 

[Leadking]

You know you're just itching to get back in.

It would be fun!

I have been looking at equipment as a mental exercise. I must be mental!

 

[widget]

That is what makes all this interesting to watch. Norris will get the tooling. Two questions remain,

will they make them and who will distribute them?

Yes, I hear you. It will be interesting to see how it progresses.

Personally I dont believe there is sufficient market for another Corporate scuba cylinder manufacturer, numbers are just too small and hence the reason Worthington all but mothballed the scuba production out of Heiser. Norris would be in much the same boat I believe.

Heiser's old clients (ourselves included) who sadly had long and personal relationships with them, were simply forced to move our purchases to Faber who picked up almost all the old Heiser clients, and now most of them are steady repeat customers, the rest were picked up by the old East German manufacturer "Apolda", (now known as Euro Cylinders) so there is certainly no shortage of supply.

Right now Faber are the dominant supplier of Scuba Cylinder's in the international market and this gives them the production numbers to remain very competitive cost wise, so Yeah, I dont know, its a very tough market and a very difficult one to make a profit in.

 

[MrChen]

My LDS said they were seeing XS tanks made by Faber when I asked how much for a new Worthington 120. Suggested I might not want to sit on it if I truly wanted a new Worthington.

---------- Post added May 19th, 2014 at 03:09 PM ----------

BTW: They were not putting any pressure to buy, it was more of a heads up.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Shoot, looks like my herd of X8-130s are about to become collectors' items.

 

[Wookie]

Shoot, looks like my herd of X8-130s are about to become collectors' items.

I've got a guy here that will buy every one of them. He prefers the x7's because he can overfill them to 145, but he'll take the X8's

What's wrong with fabers? I like fabers.

 

[MrChen]

It's not that anything is wrong with them. I bought a used x7-120 and want a pair so I don't have to modify my weights when switching between tanks. The Fabers are heavier under water by several pounds.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Fabers are also painted. I'm not a fan, but as a CCR diver I don't have any real choice. Given the difficulty of shipping steel 130s to the East coast and the lack of local interest here in HI for giant steel tanks, I'm probably going to be using mine as bank bottles/occasional OC dive tanks for quite some time.