600 Group gives thumbs-up to IMTS show

The 600 Group is reporting excellent results from the IMTS show in Chicago. Three Group companies - Clausing Industrial Inc, Pratt Burnerd America, and Electrox (USA) - all had stands at the show. In addition, Harrison Lathes was also represented on the stand of its distributor REM Sales.

Across the range of Group products, which extends from high technology laser marking machines to lathes, machining centres, and workholding equipment, both the quality and the quantity of enquiries were significantly improved upon the last show.

Group Chief Executive Tony Sweeten said 'It was a lively, buoyant show with serious customers thronging the aisles.

At times, it was almost impossible to walk on to the stands for potential customers showing a serious interest in the machines - for instance we sold 5 Harrison Alpha lathes during the show to new customers.

We believe that the American market is now a vigorous market and one in which our companies are well placed to take full advantage.

As a Group, we concentrate on two things - continual investment in improved performance and research which leads to innovation.

As a result, we have even shorter lead times than we were able to offer at the last show and machine tools and ancillary equipment which have been fine tuned to suit the needs of the customer both now and for the foreseeable future'.

The new Colchester Tornado CNC lathe, which was launched to the US market at the show by Clausing, received great acclaim.

Well suited to the market with both 3 and 5 axis versions, the lathes attracted significant attention and many serious enquiries.

Several Multiturns and many standard Colchesters were also sold during the show and very many orders received.

Clausing, which sells a balanced combination of Colchester lathes, own-manufacture machines (including the popular Richmond machining centre) and machines imported from elsewhere, offers virtually a one-stop shop to the production engineer.

President of the company, Bill Nancarrow said 'This show was up-beat, and was a clear indication that the American market is continuing to pick up well.

The atmosphere was confident and the general mood one of creating further successes by investing in the appropriate machine tools.

At Clausing we are able to offer the most appropriate technology to each individual customer.

In particular, the new five axis Tornado attracted substantial interest and we have many enquiries which we expect to convert to orders in the immediate future.

The three-axis Tornado was also very well received and we are expecting good orders for this machine too.

The new design clearly has strong appeal to the market: we even had distributors approaching us for the opportunity to sell it, a further indication of its potential.

All year we have been finding order levels increasing across the range of industries - general engineering, sub-contractors, medical engineering, aerospace and government industries - and the show seems to have capitalized on the belief that the economic climate is improving and will continue to do so'.

In addition to the success which Clausing enjoyed, a number of orders and many enquiries were received by 600 Machine Tools (the Group's company in Canada) and REM Sales was delighted with the sales and quality of enquiries it achieved.

Pratt Burnerd America, which was launching the new Programmable power chuck and the Self-Contained Power Chuck, doubled the enquiry level compared with the last IMTS and Electrox USA was so inundated with enquiries that after the first day it was forced to bring several additional staff onto the stand to cope with the volume of potential customers.