Horn Cutting tools grows 12% in 2012, looks ahead to more this year

The company improved in virtually all sectors, but was particularly strong in high technology areas, like aerospace, medical and motor racing, including Formula One. General manager Mike Green (pictured) sees it as confirmation that the 'Horn message' is beginning to win the day, with companies willing to spend a bit more on high performance tooling to gain a lot more via reduced costs. "We're very strong in applications where volumes are modest, but added value is high and quick turnaround is demanded. This is partly due to our special tooling capability, which allows us to deliver spectacular gains in productivity for a comparatively small cash cost." The company underlines that there are a significant number of Horn applications where the alternative to adopting the tooling would have been either major investment in new capital equipment or outsourcing. And there are others where Horn has proved to be the only supplier capable of fulfilling a specific task; the Supermini and thread milling programs are star performers in this respect, the company claims, while the Horn high feed milling program is "fast earning a strong reputation". Horn is expanding its distributor and sales network, too. "We are no longer the new firm on the block," Mr Green continues: "The parent company was established over 40 years ago and we've been operational under the Horn banner in the UK for around 17 years. Most of our technical sales and applications support staff are apprentice trained – me included - and have been with us for 10 years or more. We have a very good, highly experienced team of high quality people supporting superior quality products." Future growth in the UK is expected to come from oil and gas industry equipment suppliers and an expansion of activity in the aerospace. Paradoxically, as the North Sea oil reserves have begun to run down, worldwide interest in exploiting what were low yield deposits has increased significantly. The technology required to do this is highly advanced and many of the leading companies are UK based; Horn is in a strong position to provide the sophisticated tooling solutions needed to bring these devices to market. But medical and automotive will also make a major contribution, as they move to more exotic materials and seek out suppliers that can sell them the solutions they need to maximise productivity. As well as carbide, Horn currently offers a wide range of superhard insert materials including CBN, natural diamond, polycrystalline diamond and CVD 'thick film' diamond. Mr Green explains: "We have key advantages, in that our products offer very high performance and we are very experienced in applications involving difficult-to-machine materials. We are also geared up for development of special tools, whether they require customised cutter bodies or inserts or both, and we offer a wide range of coatings – applied using our in-house facilities - to maximise cutting performance." "Given our performance during 2012, it's difficult for us not to be optimistic about the coming year," Mr Green adds. "We may not be able to solve the problems of the wider economy, but we do have tooling technology that is proven to improve profitability by machining faster and more accurately across a wide range of applications. And once our customers have looked at the value, rather than the price, they tend to agree."