First international order for new Citizen model taken at MACH

The order, worth some £220,000, and for two A32-VII machines, was placed by the two joint managing directors of Unicut Precision, Charles Kenny and Jason Nicholson, and brings the total number of Citizen machines installed at the precision subcontractor’s 18,000 ft2 machine shop to 25. Commenting on the order against the pre-production machine making its world debut on the Citizen Machinery UK stand at MACH 2008, Mr Kenny maintained: “The A32 specification will give us an improvement of at least 40 per cent in productivity on the specific contracts we have in mind.” Mr Nicholson pointed out: “The potential return on the investment made the decision to purchase a low risk. From our previous experiences, we know Citizen will not let us down when the production machines are installed and with this level of productivity improvement, we are looking at the new machines almost performing the work of three existing machines.” Unicut Precision recently increased its premises at Welwyn Garden City by 40 per cent as a reaction to a sales growth of 12 per cent in 2007. In the new bay, two new Citizen K16 machines were installed in January and sited alongside two further K16 machines ordered at the EMO exhibition in Hannover during September 2007. Commenting on the credit squeeze, Mr Nicholson said: “This has not influenced our expansion plans – what has, is the movement of the euro against sterling which has already drawn significant enquires and orders for some very sophisticated components. The Citizen A32’s will free up capacity on our high specification Citizen M32 machines which will then be used for new and more complex work on difficult materials involving lots of driven tool milling.”