Mills looks back with pleasure: forward with confidence

The exclusive distributor of Doosan CNC machine tools in the UK and Ireland adds that this equates to over 330 machines sold during 2008. “These are sensational results in what many market pundits and commentators have said has been ‘a difficult year’, and demonstrates the continuing high demand for Doosan CNC machine tools,” said David Andrew, sales & marketing director. Already a major supplier of high-performance Lynx and Puma lathes and turning centres and MX-series multi-axis mill-turn, Mills has seen its milling machine tools sales (horizontal and vertical machining centres) accelerate steadily in 2008. “We are particularly pleased with machining centre sales this year,” Mr Andrew confirmed. “During a recent two-day in-house event held at our Leamington facility in early December we sold nine milling machines.” And he added that the DNM range of vertical machines launched in the UK and Ireland in September 2008 “ have been selling like hot cakes”. Nick Frampton, managing director, said: “Over the last couple of years we have developed and refined the turnkey engineering solutions side of our business. Many customers are not simply looking for a new machine tool to help improve their production capacity or capabilities – instead they are looking for a more comprehensive and systematic approach to the challenges they face as a route to revolutionising their manufacturing processes and systems. “To meet this demand we have strengthened our technical and applications teams here at Leamington and, as a consequence, have been appointed lead technical partner – planning, coordinating, project managing and implementing – in a growing number of complex, high-value, time-critical turnkey projects with customers.” The company’s after-sales services have been strengthened, too, with more regionally-based service engineers being appointed, plus significant investment in the company’s operations and logistics centre (Leamington) has taken place in recent months. New Doosan machines will be launched during the Year and the company is also actively involved in a number of high-profile initiatives that will come to fruition in 2009. These include a recently-signed Technical Partnership Agreement with Norton Motor Cycles UK which will see Mills entering the high-powered world of motor sport helping to re-launching the famous Norton motor cycle brand in the UK and across the rest of the world. Concludes David Andrew: “While many machine tool companies may be looking at 2009 with some trepidation – the exact opposite is true here at Mills.” * A company MBO and equity re-structuring in the Autumn saw the retirement of managing director Mike Jenkins and the appointment of a new management team led by Nick Frampton (new managing director), Andrew Jack (technical director), and Nav Ahluwalia (finance director). David Andrew was subsequently appointed sales & marketing director. Pictured. left to right: Nav Ahluwalia, Andrew Jack, Nick Frampton and david Andrew