EQI: Forging the Future of Resilient, Compliant Supply Chains for Line-Ready Metal Components With Altana’s Product Network
About EQI
With over twenty years of operation, EQI supplies line-ready metal components to the world’s leading OEMs in material handling, construction, aerial platform work, agriculture, and more. The products EQI designs, produces, and delivers include castings, forgings, machined and fabricated parts, counterweights, aluminum cab parts, machined steel castings, aluminum die-cast components, and thermal processing products.
In addition to providing the highest-quality metal components, EQI is a recognized expert in mitigating supply chain risk, helping its customers navigate the pandemic, tariffs, and global unrest. Manufacturers rely on EQI to build and manage resilient supply chains while cutting costs, reducing lead times, and improving metal component quality.
The Challenge: Navigating Trade Disruption and Demonstrating Compliance
To guarantee supply chain certainty for its customers, EQI needed to overcome two challenges.
The first: Recent tariffs and trade disruption have introduced substantial disruption for EQI’s customers and other industrial manufacturers that need metal components. In 2025, the U.S. raised the steel and aluminum tariff rate to 50% and expanded Section 232 levies originally applied in 2020 on steel and aluminum derivatives items. Both these actions pose challenges for industrial equipment manufacturers that need line-ready, cost-efficient parts that aren’t exposed to levies.
U.S. Companies’ Tariff Exposure Soars With Section 232 Levies on Aluminum and Steel Derivatives
The second: Compliance regulations continue to become more demanding. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), passed into law in 2022, has created a rebuttable presumption that goods produced in Xinjiang or by entities on the UFLPA Entity List are produced with forced labor and prohibited from entry into the U.S. Metals, especially aluminum, have been identified as a priority sector for UFLPA enforcement. The UFLPA also gives importers responsibility for avoiding forced labor in Tier 2, 3, 4 and beyond in product value chains — necessitating expansive visibility, supplier verification, and collaboration beyond Tier 1.
The Solution: Using Altana’s Product Network to Navigate Tariffs, Guarantee Compliance, Expand Supplier Network, and Drive Value for Customers
Combining the visibility, traceability, and collaboration available on Altana’s product network with its own existing network of trusted global foundries has allowed EQI to navigate tariffs, demonstrate compliance, and leverage market intelligence to grow sales.
Navigating tariffs and trade disruption through an expanded supplier network
With the product network, EQI is navigating tariffs and trade disruption by sourcing and procuring parts more efficiently and cost-effectively.
For example, iron counterweights are common in forklifts, cranes, excavators, and other machinery. Using Altana’s product network, EQI can identify and verify the best, most cost-efficient, and compliant cast iron foundry suppliers across the world, strategically engage with a global market, and secure the most cost-efficient components necessary for iron counterweight production. As tariffs rise on jurisdictions such as China, EQI can use Altana’s product network to identify and verify suppliers in less tariffed locations. In the July 2025 last twelve months (LTM) period, EQI estimated it reduced overall tariff expenses by 64% by providing customers with “dual source” supplier options.
Guaranteeing trade compliance with sub-tier visibility
EQI uses the product network to source and verify compliant suppliers for its metal component product lines. Deep, sub-tier visibility from Tier 1 to Tier N means that EQI and its customers avoid UFLPA violations, exposure to Russian steel, and other risks that result in costly CBP detentions, production disruptions, and reputational damage.
"Supply chain compliance is not optional. Altana’s product network gives us the visibility, traceability, and collaboration to know that we are sourcing from the best partners, both from a competitive and a compliance standpoint."
Brendan Connallon, VP of Finance, EQI
Using Altana, EQI gains access to critical information about sub-tier suppliers, including jurisdiction, manufacturing location, and a detailed breakdown of compliance and transaction history for hundreds of relevant sanctions. If suppliers – or even suppliers’ suppliers – have been flagged for forced labor or other potential violations, EQI can quickly identify new, compliant suppliers. The result has been remediating compliance risk across roughly $100M of international procurement spend in 2025.
Leveraging market intelligence to grow sales
Altana’s product network also drives sales growth for EQI. To increase sales with existing customers, EQI identifies parts a customer is currently purchasing from a different supplier, and then provides them with a more competitive quote.
The product network also helps EQI make inroads with new customers. The EQI sales team searches the product network for specific types of products, traces and pinpoints the manufacturers buying and importing those parts from heavily-tariffed locations such as China, and then offers better, more cost-efficient prices.
The market intelligence unlocked by Altana’s product network turns tariffs into a competitive advantage for EQI, as the sales team can identify parts that existing and prospective customers are importing from heavily tariffed locations such as China.
As a result, EQI now assesses a prospective customer’s existing supply chain and provides a holistic, tailored proposal on how best to re-orient with an optimized, compliant, cost-efficient supplier base. This strategy has allowed EQI to remain competitive on more than $20 million of annual business.
The Future: Using Altana’s Product Network for Free Trade Agreement Qualification, Collaboration with CBP, and More Cost Savings for Customers
In the future, EQI plans to use the Altana product network to identify cost savings for customers by fully identifying and claiming USMCA qualification on metals and metal components from Canada and Mexico.
Altana Product Passports: A Digital Pass for Trusted Trade
Altana Product Passports will allow EQI to connect and verify product information directly from supply chain partners upstream and downstream in product value chains. EQI can add proof of compliance for productions, verify supply chain connections, and collaborate with CBP to pre-verify shipments and avoid costly delays and detentions.
With this enhanced supply chain operations on Altana’s product network, EQI will continue to leverage its trusted global manufacturing network to match customers with cost-effective capabilities and components from reliable, compliant sources.
