The machines are destined for European and Chinese automotive industry customers, with contracts won from customers in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, elsewhere in northern Europe and China.
Says Mollart Engineering sales director Ian Petitt: “These are very significant orders for new machines taken against very tough European competition, with customers focusing on our project and application engineering. In one case, the final approval decision towards Mollart was aided by our long-term production history of machine reliability, spindle utilisation and customer support on two previous Mollart installations in the company.”
These orders add a high level of confidence to the new Mollart Engineering management team of Chris Barker, Ian Petitt, Mike Pragnell, Wayne Thomas and Jon Upton, who successfully acquired the family-owned business from Guy Mollart in March, backed by HSBC and Vine Street Capital.
Later this year, the company hopes to boost its export order book further by attending Chicago's IMTS manufacturing technology exhibition in September (Stand S-9290). At the previous edition of IMTS, Mollart Engineering won orders exceeding $10 million for special-purpose gundrilling machines for the production of oil galleries in transmission shafts for 9- and 10-speed automatic gearboxes for the North American market.
This year the company will show a knee-type multi-spindle gundrilling machine, which will be the latest development of this machining concept and incorporate a full Fanuc 35i control and drives package.
Said sales director Ian Petitt of the 2014 win: “We worked extremely hard to win this contract in 2014 against stiff international competition. However, we had extensive help in the project from Mike Tanasescu, technical sales manager based in Toronto, and tooling development by Botek of its special HP solid carbide drills. Botek is a strategic tooling partner of Mollart.”
