A Selma foundry once operated under Citation Bessemer has become a part of Grede Holdings LLC.

A merger between Citation Corp., which owned eight foundries including the one in Selma on Selfield Road, and Grede LLC on Friday resulted in the combination of assets from Milwaukee-based Grede Foundries Inc. and Citation Corp.

The new company, Grede Holdings LLC, will be controlled by Wayzata Investment Partners LLC. Doug Grimm will be the chairman, president and chief executive officer. He is the former CEO of Citation.

The new Grede will be based in Novi, Mich.

“The combination of Citation and Grede creates, what we believe is, the most diversified foundry company in North America with one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry,” Grimm said in a prepared statement. “We expect revenue to reach $600 million in 2010 through our combined business in the automotive, industrial and heavy truck markets.”

Significant equity investment from Wayzata and GSC Group, Citation’s largest shareholder, has reduced total funded debt of the two companies by 80 percent, or $110 million, Grimm said.

“This gives us a best-in-class financial profile, allows us to invest appropriately and weather economic cyclicality moving forward,” he said.

The new company has 2,700 employees, 14 foundries and two machining facilities with nearly 600,000 tons of iron casting capacity.

The Selma plant is one of eight foundries that made up Citation Corp. The plant was built in 1971 by Hugh Sims, according to officials at Citation.

Lewis Todd became a partner with Sims and the plant became known as Simsco-Todd.

In 1974 McWane purchased the Simsco foundries. Citation Corporation purchased the Simsco foundries in January 1984.

Selma became a satellite operation under the Citation Bessemer Foundry that includes Marion.

Citation officials said Selma is a specialty shop dealing in hard-to-make Ductile, low volume, light weight casings. The plant has about 570 different patterns that it has run.

The Selma foundry has two Hunter mold lines. The melt shop has two 2.5 furnaces and can melt up to 50,000 pounds a day.

Selma also has its own coreroom, which produces shell cores that create internal passageways through the castings. The foundry in selma can heat treat and finish castings. This plant can also have castings painted and machined, according to plant officials.

Selma is operating on one shift and employs 29 people.