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News Release from: Mills Manufacturing Technology
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 20 March 2003
UK machine tool agency performed better
in 2002
According to Mike Jenkins, managing director of Mills Manufacturing Technology, the company performed ahead of the market in terms of percentage turnover in 2002 compared with 2001.
According to Mike Jenkins, managing director of Mills Manufacturing Technology, the company shipped 195 machine tools during 2002 It performed ahead of the market in terms of percentage turnover compared with 2001, based on MTA figures, despite the distractions of moving the business from Norwich to Leamington Spa
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 23 May 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The performance is particularly impressive as 2001 was a record year for Mills while 2002 was one of the most difficult trading periods in recent history.
It means that the company has increased market share in the sectors that it operates - CNC lathes and machining centres - every year since 1997.
"We are now firmly established in the West Midlands and are already seeing benefits in terms of an increased level of customer visits," said Jenkins.
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"Our infrastructure is in place and we are in a good position to exploit the upturn in our industry when it comes." Of the machines installed last year, turnkey projects accounted for over a quarter.
"We are being asked more and more for a total service encompassing applications engineering, tooling, fixturing, programming and automation, as such skills are becoming less common at customer sites," continued Mr Jenkins.
"Even small subcontractors are buying sophisticated production cells with a view to taking costs out of the process and ultimately improving bottom line profitability." Mills has noticed the trend that in a booming market, firms tend to buy plant to satisfy capacity demands and there tends to be little time available to research the market thoroughly.
However when the market is tough, companies tend to spend more time investigating higher technology solutions that will ultimately result in lower production costs and reduced overheads.
To support this theory, Mills reports significantly improved sales of Nakamura turning centres.
A recent change has been the amicable transfer of the OKK machining centre agency in the UK from Mills to Whitehouse Machine Tools.
Mike Jenkins said that this would allow his company to concentrate effort on Daewoo (Korean) and Nakamura (Japanese) machines as well as the Kuraki and O-M agencies (also Japanese).
While Daewoo and Nakamura products form the mainstay of the Mills business, Kuraki sales have been holding up well with the purchase at the end of last year of three large capacity CNC horizontal boring machines, each with 60 tools and automatic pallet changers, by an oil industry company in the North of England.
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