Inside Torrance Casting

One of La Crosse's Longest Running Businesses

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80% of our area's growth comes from businesses already established here. The La Crosse Area Development Corporation (LADCO) spends most of our time working with these existing companies to identify what is needed to keep them and, ideally for them to expand. We call them Business Retention & Expansion visits. We consider it an honor to tell a few of their stories with you.

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With Rose Jewelers closing and the ticking clock for Kroner's Hardware closing the legacy businesses that have been around for more than 150 years are growing fewer. Torrance Casting is one of them still showing now signs of stopping. Owner Bill Torrance. Bill represents the fifth generation of Torrance family ownership, and his son, John, works alongside him as the sixth generation. Today, Torrance Casting is located in the Interstate Industrial Park, just south of the interstate near Kwik Trip’s facilities.

Founded in 1876, Torrance Casting began as a downtown La Crosse foundry specializing in custom molds and liquid metal formulations that cool into precision parts used across a wide range of industries throughout the Midwest.

Bill notes that Wisconsin has the highest number of foundries in the United States—a fact he takes pride in as part of Torrance Casting’s long legacy. That longevity includes the company’s ability to adapt, such as during the pandemic when Torrance Casting pivoted to producing weights—dumbbells and plates—to keep employees working. While that production ended once lower-cost overseas manufacturing resumed, samples of those weights remain on display in the office, alongside other artifacts that tell the company’s rich history.

The company operated in downtown La Crosse until 1974, when it relocated to the industrial park just south of the interstate. A handful of years ago, Torrance Casting expanded its original building by adding a vertical storage system—allowing for increased capacity without expanding the building’s footprint.

The La Crosse Area Development Corporation (LADCO) is grateful to Bill Torrance, one of the organization’s original members and a founding board member when LADCO was formed in 1971. His leadership and commitment to the community continue to shape La Crosse’s economic story.