Flood damage accelerates Hardinge and J&S consolidation

In February 2011, the company announced a premises consolidation between its two centres in Leicester - Hardinge Machine Tools in Whetstone and Jones & Shipman Grinding Ltd in the north of the City. The consolidation was progressing, but flood damage to the offices at Hardinge Ltd has necessitated an acceleration of the move. Offices were damaged by water entering through the roof structure, but the showroom and machine preparation areas were largely untouched. By rapidly relocating the office operations to the J&S headquarters, telephone and computer communications were fully restored to the original contact numbers, with the Whetstone factory premises also now back to full operation. "There has been a massive team effort to both re-locate and re-connect Hardinge into the J&S operation," said Martin Doyle, Hardinge UK sales and marketing manager. "The fact we were up and running early in the following week is a credit to our whole team and those outside contractors we were relying upon, particularly for communications," he added. "Although parts of our operation are working under the same roof, both Hardinge and J&S retain their individual identities, which was always the intention. The unfortunate events of last week have accelerated our longer term plans but, thanks to the efforts of all our teams, we have kept disruption for customers as minimal as possible. In all respects it is business as usual," Martin Doyle concluded. Image: Hardinge technology in use at customer Redline's premises