Joseph Grewe, CEO at Amcast said, “The year to August 2002 had been a tough year, but things were getting better.” North American wheel division continued to perform well with sales up 25 percent, more than doubling their operating income. Automotive sales increased by 30 per cent in total for the final quarter of the year against the same quarter in the previous year. Improved performance of the wheels operations and cost cutting exercises were offset by losses incurred at the Richmond plant affected by launch problems with five major new product launches. An underestimation of demand from the motor manufacturers forced Amcast to increase purchases and develop new unplanned capacity to meet the requested production flow.Despite the general good news the company performed slightly worse in 2002 than in 2001. Largely due to the problems at Richmond and continued poor performance from Speedline. Flow Control also saw a drop in income of 51 percent due to a lower market and one time IT expenses. However, the company reports that five out of eleven production facilities operated profitably in 2002 against only three out of eleven for 2001.