This month 25 years ago - January 1994

Machine tool industry slowdown and remedies; chlorinated paraffin concerns; coolant recycling; high speed spindles; B Elliott companies bought out; largest press brake built in the UK; are transfer lines at end of the line; UK gear making; and subcontracting. In the first issue of the new year, our first comment concerns the global machine tool production slowdown of 1992 and the European industry’s response. Italy’s relevant association, UCIMO, had organised a convention to discuss it with a view to developing a European strategy to support the industry. UCIMU president Flavio Radice was calling for increased public sector investment against a backdrop of “Europe’s continuing retreat from volume production”, as Professor Gian Maria Gros-Pietro of Turing University describes the situation, adding that Japan has 15 of the top 25 global machine tool producers while Europe has just six. A self-help initiative in Italy has been kicked off to guide the country’s machine tool builders by qualifying demand from main user industries. If successful, more broadly this could lead to a coherent European product development and manufacture strategy, we speculate.