Client Project — Bilingual B2B Manufacturing Website
LIT-15 Cast Iron Foundry
Export-facing manufacturing, in two languages.
LIT-15 has cast grey and ductile iron in Vidin, north-western Bulgaria, since 1994, working to customer drawings with a complete production cycle on one site. Most of its output goes to the European Union, so the site had to work as well for a German or Italian buyer as for a Bulgarian one.
The challenge
Nobody chooses a foundry from a brochure. The person deciding is an engineer or a buyer with a drawing in front of them, checking whether the plant can physically make the part — mould format, iron grade, machining envelope, inspection methods. A site that answers with “quality and service you can trust” fails that reader immediately. It needed to publish the specification and let the numbers do the arguing.
What we built
The bilingual site
Six pages in full Bulgarian and English — capabilities, iron castings, quality, about, contact — each language a complete mirror rather than a partial translation, with hreflang connecting the pairs.
The technical layer
A specification table setting out moulding process, mould format and rate, melting and sand capacity, machining envelopes and inspection methods, alongside a step-by-step account of the production cycle from process engineering through to dispatch.
Key user journeys
Can they make my part?
Homepage → Manufacturing capabilities → technical data → check mould format, grade and machining envelope against the drawing → Send an enquiry
Can I trust the metal?
Quality → liquid metal control, testing of finished parts, in-house laboratory → spectral, metallographic, mechanical and ultrasonic inspection
Key capabilities
- Complete Bulgarian and English versions, with hreflang and a Bulgarian x-default
- A technical data table set in monospace, so figures line up and scan like a datasheet
- The production cycle described in seven stages rather than summarised as “full service”
- Enquiry form capturing company, country and enquiry type, so an export request arrives already sorted
- Photography of the actual plant and moulding line — no stock manufacturing imagery
Visual walkthrough
The homepage states the material, the industries and the year the plant started — before any claim about quality.
The specification, published rather than promised. Monospace figures so a reader can scan the column the way they would a datasheet.
The Bulgarian site is a full mirror, not a translated homepage with English pages behind it.
Products are described by what they are made to — customer documentation — rather than sold from a catalogue the foundry doesn’t have.
On mobile the phone number and language switch sit above everything else — the two things an overseas visitor reaches for first.
Technical approach
- Next.js App Router with locale-segmented routes, so Bulgarian and English are real URLs rather than a client-side language toggle.
- hreflang tags pair every page with its counterpart, with Bulgarian set as x-default for visitors outside the covered languages.
- The enquiry form posts through a server action, with a hidden honeypot field and the visitor's locale carried through so replies come back in the language they wrote in.
What this demonstrates
Writing for a technical buyer in two languages at once — publishing the specification an engineer needs to qualify a supplier, instead of the reassurance a brochure would offer.
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