The restructuring of the sales division at machine-tool specialist Dugard is now complete, with the company adding six new employees over the past 18 months.

The latest phase in this restructuring programme has seen the company add two more area sales managers. In the southwest and Wales region, Dugard has employed Peter Tilsed, who joins the company alongside Kevin Searl, who will offer sales support to the East Anglia and Home Counties region.
Says managing director Eric Dugard: “We’ve added world-class brands to our portfolio and the sales of these high-quality machines will rest firmly upon the shoulders of our new team. The management team at Dugard are confident that our new sales engineers have the right blend of industry expertise and local market insight to really drive the advantages of the Dugard brand into manufacturing facilities the length and breadth of the UK.”
For further information www.dugard.com

Wire manufactured in the West Midlands is helping support the UK’s unprecedented drive to build more ventilators.

Alloy Wire International has been commissioned to supply more than 5 km of material that will be used to produce crucial parts for life-saving equipment deployed by the new Nightingale Hospital in London. The company, which holds more than 200 tonnes of EU/DFARS compliant stock at any one time, put its ‘Emergency Manufacturing Service’ (EMS) into action to meet the urgent requirements of a spring maker that, as part of the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium, is assisting in the ramp-up of Smiths and Penlon ‘Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator Systems’.
For further information www.alloywire.com

Defence industry specialist Babcock is set to manufacture 10,000 ventilators to help deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

The plan comes shortly after after Dyson said it had received a government order for 10,000 ventilators. Babcock’s statement said: “We responded quickly to the UK’s Ventilator Challenge and we are proud to have been awarded a contract to manufacture 10,000 Zephyr Plus ventilators – subject to regulatory approvals – a product being developed in collaboration with an established major international supplier of critical care ventilators.”
For further information www.babcockinternational.com

The manufacture of ventilator parts is driving demand for sliding-head lathes from Citizen Machinery.

For example, an existing customer in the West Country got in touch to say that a medical equipment OEM was requesting a fourfold increase in capacity to produce critical ventilator components. The subcontractor ordered two Cincom machines for urgent delivery. The first, a 32 mm capacity L32-XLFV, was installed two days later on 19 March. Citizen’s engineers worked around the clock to commission the machine so it could start making the ventilator parts. The second machine, a 20 mm bar capacity Cincom L20-VIIILFV, was installed on 27 March.
By then, in the space of a fortnight, Citizen had received further orders from another four customers for five more machines to be delivered at short notice for ventilator parts manufacture, and there is no sign of demand slowing.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk

A consortium of significant UK industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors, has come together
to produce medical ventilators for the UK.

The VentilatorChallengeUK Consortium is led by Dick Elsy, CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Over the past two weeks the consortium has been working hard to investigate the production of a range of ventilator design options to meet a high-level specification for a rapidly manufactured ventilator system developed by clinicians and the MHRA.
For further information www.ventilatorchallengeuk.com