Two sides to every story

being a successful show for the Leighton Buzzard company, it describes the event more a case of “making lemonade from lemons.”

Hone-All director, Andrea Rodney elaborated: "Overall, MACH 2016 yielded more enquiries than MACH 2014, but we had to work a lot harder for these sales leads. This was down to the poor location of the UK Manufacturing Zone that was tucked away at the back of the hall and was very poorly marketed by the show organiser. We are extremely proud to be a successful UK manufacturer, but we also need the wider industry and the MTA to be proud of us, acknowledge our efforts and showcase our capabilities more prominently in future."

Despite the underlying discontent for certain factors about MACH 2016, Hone-All was predominantly pleased with the overall event as Ms Rodney revealed: “The overriding factor was that MACH was better attended and more positive than people expected. Furthermore, with the large machine tool companies having a great show and selling large quantities of equipment, it brings the confidence factor back that has been ebbing away in recent months in the wake of an under-performing oil and gas sector and the clouds that have loomed over the UK steel industry.

“It’s very positive for so many subcontractors and OEMs to be buying plant at the show, as this gives the whole industry the 'shot in the arm' that it needed."

On a more personal note, according to Ms Rodney, the leads generated by Hone-All were a direct result of the company enforcing the message about its new capabilities and capacity that has arrived through investment in new deep hole boring technology.

As well as educating the market as to why it should be investing in Hone-All's subcontract service, the company also placed emphasis on the additional capacity of its two new Tibo Tiefbohrtechnik deep hole boring machines that were acquired in 2015.

This technology combined with Hone-All’s large capacity roller manufacture and gun drilling capability was in demand at MACH 2016. The two machines have increased capacity and extended maximum boring capacity to 250mm with a length of 3.1m; making the new machines an ideal complement to the company's 4m turning capacity.

Hone-All www.hone-all.co.uk