After Pace: Building a More Resilient Die Casting Supply Chain with MES Inc.

With Pace Industries’ permanent closures reshaping North American die casting capacity, manufacturers are reassessing more than just suppliers — they’re rethinking the model itself.

The Pace Industries Closure and What It Signals

Pace Industries has announced the permanent closure of its plants in Harrison, Arkansas; Muskegon, Michigan; and Jackson, Tennessee — withdrawing a substantial volume of aluminum die casting capacity from the North American market. For Pace’s direct customers, the urgency is immediate: tooling has to move, programs have to be requalified, and continuity of supply has to be secured before the closure clock runs out.

But the implications extend well beyond Pace’s customer list. North American die casting capacity has been quietly contracting for years, pressured by energy costs, labor availability, and capital investment requirements. Pace was one of the largest aluminum die casters on the continent. Its exit removes a meaningful share of regional capacity at a moment when surviving suppliers are already running at high utilization.

For procurement leaders, two risks compound: capacity risk as demand redistributes across fewer suppliers, and continuity risk as tooling transfers, requalification, and PPAP cycles consume engineering bandwidth that most organizations are not staffed to absorb on short notice.

The takeaway is not that domestic die casting is finished — it isn’t. The takeaway is that supply chain architecture now matters more than any single supplier relationship. The manufacturers who weather closures like this with the least disruption are the ones whose programs were designed for resilience from the start: globally diversified, redundantly sourced, actively managed, and supported by a partner who owns outcomes rather than just delivers parts.

That is the model MES Inc. has been building for years. Here is what it looks like in practice.

What MES Brings to the Table

A Global Sourcing Network Built for Resilience

MES is not a single-plant manufacturer. We are a supply chain management partner with active sourcing operations across China, Mexico, India, Vietnam, and Europe — each region selected for specific cost, lead time, capability, and geopolitical risk characteristics. We currently manage more than 1,500 die cast components across this network, and our broader supplier base extends to hundreds of qualified facilities across our full manufacturing portfolio.

This footprint exists for one reason: when a region experiences disruption — political, logistical, or operational — we can shift volume without disrupting your production schedule. Dual-source redundancy is engineered into every program from day one, not bolted on after the first crisis.

For North American manufacturers in particular, our USMCA-compliant nearshoring in Mexico, paired with US warehouse inventory in Ohio, gives customers the speed and trade compliance of regional supply with the cost structure and capacity of global sourcing.

Full Die Casting Capability — and Beyond

Die casting is core to what we do, but it is one capability within a broader manufacturing portfolio that includes forgings, extrusions, CNC machining, and investment castings — all managed under the same program framework, by the same teams, against the same standards.

Within die casting specifically, MES delivers:

• High-pressure and low-pressure die casting in aluminum, zinc, magnesium, and brass

• Press range from 50 to 4,400 tons, covering precision components through large structural castings

• Tolerances to ±0.005″

• Integrated CNC machining, leak testing, X-ray, and ultrasonic inspection

• Moldflow analysis conducted before tooling is cut, so dimensional and fill issues are resolved in design — not discovered on your production floor

For customers consolidating multi-process programs, this matters: a forging, a die casting, and a machined component can be sourced, qualified, and delivered through a single accountable partner instead of three.

A Dedicated Program Team for Every Customer

This is where MES diverges most sharply from the transactional supplier model. Every MES customer is assigned:

• A dedicated supply chain specialist, who provides live updates from the factory floor through warehousing to the customer’s dock. This person is your single point of accountability for the program — not a rotating call center, not a regional rep, not a shared inbox.
• A dedicated planner, who partners directly with your team on forecasting, order management, and demand planning. The planner sits inside your operating cadence and absorbs variability before it becomes a problem.

When something changes — a forecast shift, a quality concern, a supplier issue — you are not opening a ticket. You are calling people who already know your program inside and out.

On-Site Engineering and Quality at the Source

MES engineers and quality professionals are physically present at supplier facilities during production runs. We don’t rely on a quality report emailed from another continent. We manage consistency at the shop floor, on the press, during the run.

This applies at every stage of the program:

• In design, our engineers support component design-for-manufacturability, tooling design review, and Moldflow analysis before steel is cut.
• In production, our quality team conducts in-process inspection, first-article validation, and ongoing audits at the supplier facility.
• At delivery, every program passes through our quality system before reaching the customer dock.

The result is that issues are caught upstream — before they become disruptions, scrap, or line-down events on your floor.

Warehousing, JIT, and Post-Production Support

MES operates warehouses in Ohio, Mexico, and Europe — strategically located to support JIT delivery into customer plants across our key markets. These facilities are more than storage:

• Inventory programs and JIT fulfillment that decouple your production schedule from overseas lead times
• Rework, kitting, sub-assembly, and packaging for last-mile customization and post-production needs
• Buffer inventory that absorbs shipping variability, demand spikes, and supplier slowdowns

For customers transitioning from a domestic single-source model to a globally diversified one, this regional warehouse footprint is often the missing link that makes global sourcing feel local.

Industries We Serve

The MES program management model has been validated across some of the most demanding industrial markets in the world. Our customers include Eaton, Honda, Siemens, ZF Group, Schneider Electric, Honeywell, Emerson, and Acuity Brands, with active programs spanning:

• Automotive and e-mobility
• Commercial and architectural lighting
• Electrical and power management
• Energy, controls, and process industries
• Construction and agricultural equipment
• Robotics and industrial automation

These customers chose MES because they don’t want a vendor — they want a partner who owns execution from RFQ to delivery and holds themselves to the same standards their customers apply to their own operations.

Closing Thought

Supplier closures are disruptive, but they are also clarifying. They reveal which supply chains were built for resilience and which were built around the last quote received. The manufacturers who use this moment to rethink their sourcing model — not just replace their supplier — will emerge with stronger, more durable operations.

If your team is reassessing die casting supply in the wake of the Pace closure, we would welcome the conversation.

MES Inc. is a global supply chain management partner specializing in die castings, forgings, extrusions, CNC machining, and investment castings. Headquartered in Ohio with sourcing operations across China, Mexico, India, Vietnam, and Europe and warehousing on three continents, MES manages over 1,500 components for industry leaders in automotive, e-mobility, energy, lighting, electrical, robotics, and industrial markets.