Dugard expands sales team

Joining the company in January as the new product sales manager, Mr Thomson will be tasked with managing the new range of Hanwha sliding head turning centres throughout the UK.

Dugard was appointed as the UK agent for the South Korean Hanwha brand at the tail end of 2018, to offer UK manufacturers an alternative to the historically monopolised sliding head sector. The Hanwha range of machines will also be supported by the existing Dugard sales team,

With almost 30 years in manufacturing, Mr Thomson began his engineering career as a machine shop apprentice at a prominent aerospace subcontract company in Essex. He has since cut his teeth in technical sales and account management by working with a number of leading machine tool and cutting tool manufacturers.

With much of this period spent with a prominent sliding head lathe manufacturer, he is ideally positioned to give the Hanwha brand a foothold in the niche industry segment.

Commenting upon joining Dugard, Mr Thomson said: “When this opportunity came along it was too good to refuse. The opportunity to join a company like Dugard and introduce the market to a completely new brand is really exciting. I thrive on the challenge of selling the technical features and benefits to end-users and with Hanwha, we have a genuinely market disrupting brand.”

He continued: “The Hanwha sliding head turning range has the technical attributes to compete with leading brands whilst offering a significantly more attractive price-point. The machines are available with Fanuc or Siemens CNC; in fact Hanwha has worked closely with Siemens to enhance both the drives and controls of the range – a Siemens controlled Hanwha can provide 23kW power on both the main and sub-spindle which is unparalleled in the sliding head market. This is ideal for manufacturers that demand high material removal rates on challenging materials.”

“Another salient point about the Hanwha is that it is the only siding head brand that has a true 42mm diameter capacity guide bush offering,” Mr Thomson added. “When removing the guide bush, this machine capacity reaches an unprecedented 45mm, exceeding the capacity of competitor machines.”

Dugard www.dugard.com