New moves

Although predictably visitor numbers were down compared to the 2007 event, the quality of the visitors to the Kasto stand was encouraging with many customers having budgets in place for 2010 or concrete investment plans and some actually close to making final purchasing decisions.

Chairman, joint managing director and owner of the Kasto Group, Armin Stolzer remarked: “Unlike the last EMO in Milan, which was basically a domestic exhibition with limited foreign participation, we welcomed onto our stand almost as many visitors from other European countries and worldwide as we did Italian visitors.” In Milan, the focus in sawing technologies was on advancements in high efficiency sawing machines. Strong interest was shown not only in high power cutting with KPC-enabled KastoTec bandsaws, but also in fast circular sawing for automotive applications and in storage technology.

Concerning the business cycle within the machine tool industry, the sawing sector has seen considerable order contraction over the past 12 months, which has now stabilised at a relatively low level.

There are, however, indicators from the Treasury in the UK and the CBI that Germany and other continental European countries are likely to grow by 1.5% in 2010, compared with a 0.6 – 1% growth in the UK. Furthermore, as the automotive manufacturers have destocked over the last year, car production is already starting to ramp up, with BMW even working over the coming Christmas period.

Kasto predicts that current positive trends observed in renewable energies and in the aluminium sector will translate into significant new business when the recovery starts in earnest.

In the UK, Kasto had a particularly good month in terms of order intake during October. Earlier this month, the company officially opened its new factory in Milton Keynes following a number of years at its base in Southampton. “Our new showroom in Milton Keynes is ideally located to display our wide range of automated vertical handling systems for bar and sheetmetal as well as our sawing equipment,” explained Kasto's managing director, Ernst Wagner. “More importantly, it's more centrally located for our customer-base.”

An opening ceremony was held during November with ribbon cutting honours conducted by Mrs Lee Shaw of the Aluminium Stockholders Association.

Kasto
www.kasto.uk.com