GHI HORNOS INDUSTRIALES, SL

Their core work

GHI Hornos Industriales is a Spanish SME that designs and manufactures industrial furnaces and heat treatment equipment, based in the Basque Country's industrial heartland of Galdacano. In H2020 projects, they contribute real-world expertise in metal making processes, scrap preheating systems, and process control for high-temperature industrial operations. Their participation spans digitalization of manufacturing quality, retrofitting of metal processing equipment, and development of advanced high-performance materials including superalloys and ceramic coatings — all grounded in their core business of industrial thermal processing.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

GHI's H2020 journey began in 2019 with a focus on digitalization and quality control in manufacturing (QU4LITY), reflecting the Industry 4.0 wave sweeping European SMEs. By 2020, their projects shifted decisively toward hard metallurgy and materials science — retrofitting metal making equipment (REVaMP) and developing advanced superalloys and ceramic coatings (HIPERMAT). This evolution suggests a company that first embraced digital tools for their existing operations, then applied that digital capability to more ambitious materials and process challenges.

GHI is moving from pure equipment manufacturing toward materials-aware, digitally-monitored thermal processing — positioning itself as a furnace company that understands both the physics and the data.

How they like to work

GHI participates exclusively as a partner, never coordinating — typical for an industrial SME contributing domain expertise and test infrastructure to larger research consortia. With 86 unique partners across just 3 projects, they consistently join large consortia (averaging ~29 partners per project), suggesting they are valued as an end-user validation partner. This pattern indicates a company that provides real industrial environments for testing research outputs rather than driving the research agenda itself.

Despite only three projects, GHI has built a broad network of 86 unique partners across 17 countries, reflecting the large-scale Innovation Action and RIA consortia they join. Their reach is genuinely pan-European, with no apparent geographic concentration beyond their Spanish base.

What sets them apart

GHI brings something rare to consortia: they are a working industrial furnace manufacturer, not a research lab. This means projects involving metal processing, high-temperature materials, or manufacturing digitalization can validate results on real production equipment in a real factory. For consortium builders, GHI offers the credibility of an end-user SME in heavy industry — a profile that reviewers value highly and that is genuinely hard to find.

Highlights from their portfolio

• HIPERMAT
  Largest funding (€337,688) and broadest technical scope — superalloys, high entropy alloys, ceramic coatings — representing GHI's most ambitious materials science involvement.
• REVaMP
  Most directly aligned with GHI's core business of industrial furnaces, focusing on retrofitting metal making equipment with sensors and improved process control.
• QU4LITY
  Their entry into H2020, marking the transition from traditional furnace manufacturing into digitally-enabled zero defect production.