About Us
Hornbeam is a new cookware brand from bespoke cast iron radiator manufacturer, Castrads. With over 20 years of experience working with cast iron, Hornbeam combines the specialist skills of our operations, manufacturing and product design teams. We're thrilled to be bringing cookware onto our production line and pouring our collective knowledge into a premium skillet. We launched in August 2024 with a successful Kickstarter.
Hornbeam is our Ikigai, the natural meeting point of our passion for cooking, our professional engineering capabilities, our mission to end planned obsolescence and our vocational commitment to cast iron as a circular material for the modern home.
It's something the world needs: Faddy, teflon-coated 'non-stick' pans with no longevity are being aggressively marketed on social media while the complaints pile up. Reviewers are despairing that after six months the coating is useless, the handle is falling off and customer care is non-existent. We believe the world needs sustainably produced, lifetime-use cookware that they can trust to not contaminate their food.
It supports 65 families: Our business employs 65 people in three countries. Bringing Hornbeam alongside Castrads diversifies and strengthens the company for the benefit of our entire team. We are a family-owned business run by brothers Adam and Nick Baylis.
It's our expertise: In 2020, we began onshoring the casting of our radiators. Along the way we've worked with some of the most innovative foundries in the UK, bringing to life academic theory to develop pouring systems that practically eliminate defects in our radiator castings. We’re now able to use that same methodology to cast pans in England that are the best we’ve ever seen.
It's something we love: In 2018, we took our radiators over to the US and set up Castrads in New York. After two years living in the States, we came home completely converted to the great American tradition of cooking in cast iron. We were cooking before we were making radiators: among our team there’s everything from former pro chefs to avid home bakers, and today everyone in the team is a committed cast iron convert.
