Cutting tool specialist Guhring UK has celebrated its 50th anniversary in style with a celebratory event at its Birmingham headquarters.
Hosted last week at the state-of-the-art manufacturing site in Estone Drive, Guhring welcomed technical partners, customers, suppliers as well as esteemed guests such as Chairman of the Board Oliver Guehring.
Guhring UK was established 50 years ago in a rented facility a few miles from its existing site as an operation only selling drills to local manufacturers with a trade counter for ‘walk-in’ ordering. Today the company operates from a 60,000ft² manufacturing facility that produces solid carbide and HSS round tooling as well as PCD tools with a complete service for bespoke specialised tooling production, regrinding and service, coating, tool design and more.
Opening proceedings, Guhring UK managing director Chris Weston presented the company’s first product catalogue from 50 years ago and discussed the journey from a small local supplier to one of the UK’s most successful cutting tool manufacturers.
He said: “Now we can offer almost every rotary cutting tool from drills, reamers, taps and milling cutters in HSS, carbide, PCD and Cermet along with grooving tools, tool holders and vending and tool management systems. Most of these tools are manufactured here in the UK and we also hold up to £5 million of inventory of standard product lines for next-day delivery. Moving to this fantastic facility in 2017 was a huge leap forward and it will be the springboard to help us grow over the next 50 years.”
Chairman of the Board and the fourth generation of the family-owned business, Oliver Guehring said he was hugely proud of the UK facility and discussed how the 47 worldwide Guhring subsidiaries achieved record growth in 2022, something that is forecast to continue through 2023.
Gareth Jones, managing director of In-Comm training also gave a presentation on the future of manufacturing and why companies like Guhring that invest hugely in apprenticeships and staff training are the future of UK manufacturing.
Following the presentations, guests were given tours of the facility and invited to test their skills with some fun activities such as golf, and a driving simulator and there was an arena set up by renowned Guhring customer RoboChallenge for attendees to pit their wits against fellow attendees in the robot arena.
In September, the Guhring group will be celebrating 125 years of business.
Guhring UK
