Agie Charmilles reports best ever year

The firm which offers EDM, milling and laser ablation technology, said that, by both value and volume, 2011its best ever year and significantly surpassed its previous best performance achieved in 2008. Commenting on the results, AgieCharmilles' managing director, Martin Spencer, said: "2011 was a landmark year for us. We started strongly in January 2011 and never looked back. I'm glad to say that 2012 has started in a similar fashion too." Sales of its advanced machine tools were described as "particularly pleasing", with high-end die-sink machines equipped with integrated IQ (Zero Wear) technology and high-end wire EDM machines with 'duo wire' capability featuring prominently. On the milling side, a continued demand for Mikron HPMU 5-axis machines was seen, as was an increase in sales for integrated automation solutions (robots, work loading/unloading systems etc). "We were, and are, well positioned to capitalise on the economic recovery, and over 20% of machine tool orders were from new customers, which demonstrated the appeal of our technologies," Mr Spencer added. "We strengthened the turnkey solutions side of our business further during the year and this paid dividends, with us first securing, and then designing and implementing, a number of high added value projects, particularly in the aerospace sector." Other investments made in adding extra people and resources to its sales and service support operations, and investing in advanced real-time monitoring 'service infrastructure' systems also paid off, making the company more responsive and better prepared to deal with customers' service requests. To help achieve its 2012 targets, the company will be exhibiting at the Southern Manufacturing Show in February (See here for preview<./a>) and will be holding its own Open House in March.