Dowson Food Machinery was established in Yorkshire in 1982 under the skilled entrepreneurship of founder John Murgatroyd.

He set about designing new products for slicing and bagging bread, and before long was supplying bespoke equipment and service support to many of the UK’s leading bakery groups, as well as to smaller independent and artisan bakers.
Now run by managing director Nick Lacey, the company exports across five continents and has machines installed at customers such as Warburtons and Hovis.
The success of the business meant that expansion was inevitable and, in 2015, it moved to a new 48,000 sq ft facility in Bradford, nearly three times the size of the original factory. Now employing 60 people and with the space for more equipment, new lines were designed to include products for speciality breads, flatbreads, rolls and tortillas.
The company’s main asset today is its in-house CNC machining capability.
“We offer more than our competitors,” explains James Carson, sales and marketing manager. “To have our own Haas machines on-site is not only economical, it gives us a level of control over quality and lead-time which we would never have by outsourcing.
“We can alter or modify a component to change the way a piece of equipment works, then test it straight away in-house.”
In 2017, Dowson decided to replace one of its lathes and, after careful research, invested in a Haas ST-15 turning centre with a 15 kW, 4,000 rpm spindle and 210 mm chuck. “You get a lot of bang for your buck,” says purchasing manager Andrew Sands. “We paid less for the ST-15 than we did for a lathe we bought 10 years ago, and it more than matches it for accuracy and reliability.”
For further information www.haas.co.uk

Unicut Precision invested over £1.5m in seven machine installations during late 2017, of which six were by Citizen Machinery UK.

The Citizen-supplied machines comprised two Miyano BNE-51MSY fixed-head and four Cincom L12-VII sliding-head turn-mill centres, with one featuring Low Frequency Vibration (LFV) technology. This contribution to improve productivity targets has helped to make 2018 a clear sales record for the subcontractor, putting the firm well on target to hit sales of £5m this year.
Says managing director of the Welwyn Garden City based firm Jason Nicholson: “Our order book reflects our revised strategy to move from being a subcontract machinist – reacting to orders as they roll in – to one that continuously generates business from being a ‘supply partner’. In this role, we have a willingness to invest and align our production capability across the company to customer product and delivery needs.”
Unicut is shipping on average 1.2 million parts a month and processes 370 different product orders, of which a third is directly exported. In addition, as the company has moved forward, it has added the responsibility to provide some 30 different ‘direct-to-line’ assemblies and sub-assemblies to customers.
The decision to install two Miyano BNE-51MSY fixed-head machines followed the firm’s market review of twin-turret, two-spindle turn-mill centres. The discussions also included the replacement of sliding-head machines that were concluded with four Cincom L12-VII models arriving, of which one was specified with LFV cutting technology.
On the Citizen Cincom machines, the patented LFV technology is not based on changing macros at the CNC but on the initiation of selectable G-code sequences programmed at the machine control to impart the most appropriate size of chip to be produced.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk