Each day, 10,000 cast-iron products are produced at the Lodge Mfg. Company foundry in Tennessee. The company’s iron skillets, pots, pans, griddles, and Dutch ovens remain popular with many chefs because they distribute heat evenly, and are versatile enough to be used on the stovetop, in the oven, or over a fire.

A century ago, there were a number of cast-iron skillet manufacturers in the U.S., based mostly in Ohio. Gradually, through the Great Depression, competition, and then consumers’ gravitation to aluminum pans, all of them stopped making cast-iron kitchen products except for Lodge, which is family-owned. 

Joseph Lodge first opened his foundry in 1896. When it burned down in 1910, he built a new one.

Lodge Mfg. Company has continued to improve their processes and products through the years. One big step came in 1992, when the company replaced its coal-fired cupola furnaces with an induction melting system. That reduced emissions substantially. In 2012, Lodge earned Energy Star Partner status from the EPA, achieving its five-year goal of another 10 percent improvement in energy efficiency in a single year.

Another innovation was their invention of foundry-seasoned cast iron cookware. Lodge sprays vegetable oil onto the cookware and bakes it in at high temperatures. The result is an easy-release cooking surface. The process won the Good Housekeeping “Good Buy Award” in 2003 and has won Lodge a new generation of fans. With chefs having rediscovered the benefits of cast-iron cooking, it’s a good bet that Lodge will be producing products in the Volunteer State for decades to come.