Agie Charmilles rearranges Swiss activities

The company is to concentrate EDM manufacture at its other Swiss sites of Losen and Geneva, discontinuing EDM activities at its Charmilles Technologies Maschinenbau Ag, Schaffhausen facility where it will now introduce assembly of three Mikron machining centre models. Existing manufacturing activities at Mikron, Nidau will continue, but it cannot further expand to keep pace with demand. A substantial share of the EDM machines assembled at Schaffhausen were delivered to the Asian market, but this volume is diminishing because the company's Beijing factory is set to increasingly supply the Asian market, which it can do so more cost competitively, says Agie Charmilles. In a further move, the mechanical component manufacture business of Charmilles Technologies Maschinenbau, Schaffhausen is to be sold to fellow Swiss firm Rieter Machine Works in Winterthur by the middle of 2006. Rieter intends to transfer these activities to Winterthur by the end of 2006. The changes are part of a plan to reduce vertical integration, lowering the business risk from the cyclic machine tool business, says the company.