Ficep boosts customer support

Ficep is increasing its customer support focus with a new service engineer appointment. Although the company says it already offers the highest ratio of service engineers to installations in the steel processing industry, Ficep has now appointed a dedicated service engineer to cover Scotland. The arrival of the new engineer takes the total number of service engineers in the business to nine, with coverage across the whole of the UK.

UK service manager Richard Clark says: “Our CNC machinery sits at the heart of the production line for many of our customers, and downtime would cause the entire manufacturing operation to suffer almost immediately. As such, we’re continually looking at ways of enhancing the support we offer.

“Our field team has extensive CNC experience and is highly trained on Ficep equipment,” continues Clark. “We aim to reduce the time engineers spend in the car and increase the amount of time they can spend on site. Adding to our network of service engineers is helping us achieve this, and means that our customers in Scotland can now have an experienced engineer on site even more quickly, if needed.”

Ficep’s focus on aftercare and customer support aims to meet a range of business needs, and the company offers flexible support packages, all designed with customers in mind. For instance, the company offers experienced technical support with its hotline engineers, who can diagnose issues without delay via an internet connection. Ficep also offers numerous service contracts. The standard package includes an annual machine service, a guaranteed 48-hour response time, two call-out days during the year, and discounts on spares. Bespoke support is also available.

For further information
www.ficep.co.uk/services

Record Lantek sales in 2020

In a year marked by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, sheet-metal software solutions expert, Lantek, achieved record sales of €21.3m, slightly higher than the figure recorded in the previous financial year. The company also achieved a record figure in terms of the number of active users. In 2020, Lantek gained 2247 new customers, bringing the total to 25,747 across more than 100 countries. The UK, in particular, achieved another year of continuous growth and adapted well to remote working for support, training and commercial presentations.

For further information
www.lantek.com

Virtual careers fair

Swiss Steel, Bevan Group and Alucast are among the UK manufacturers taking part in the Made Futures virtual careers fair (22-26 March), a free virtual event encouraging people to apply for jobs in manufacturing. The Made in Group, a trade association challenging the erosion of British industry, will host the week-long event via an interactive platform.

Manufacturers across the Midlands and Yorkshire will have a virtual stand where job seekers can speak directly with employers and learn more about their businesses.

For further information
https://is.gd/efilos

XYZ strengthens sales team

XYZ Machine Tools has made additions to its sales team with the appointments of Josh Adams and Lee Wilkinson, along with a change of role for John Aspinall. The most recent appointment is Adams (left), who will take on the area sales manager role covering Leicestershire, Oxfordshire and Coventry. He has extensive tool-making knowledge and experience in sales within the tooling and work-holding sector.

The second appointment is that of Wilkinson (centre), who will develop sales in the southeast of England, covering parts of Bedfordshire, Essex, London, Surrey and Kent. With an engineering background and broad experience in sales of high-quality tooling, work holding and machine tools, Wilkinson is looking forward to getting face-to-face with customers. A further new area sales manager is John Aspinall, who moves internally from education sales. Aspinall will cover South Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and into the Walsall and Telford postcode areas.

For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Business manager appointment

Mills CNC, the exclusive distributor of Doosan machine tools in the UK and Ireland, has appointed Russell Harding as business manager for the Yorkshire and Humberside region.

Harding, a seasoned engineering solutions sales professional, takes over the business manager position from Adrian Jagger who, after 26 years in post, is taking on new and wider business development responsibilities within the company.

Harding is no stranger to the machine-tool and ancillary technologies sector, or to the Yorkshire and Humberside region for that matter, having worked as Fenn Tools’ business manager (covering a similar geographical area) for the past eight years. Prior to that, he worked as a CNC machinist for 15 years and has extensive knowledge and experience of machining and cutting-tool processes, as well as specific expertise in the aerospace sector.

For further information www.millscnc.co.uk