Cutwel Ltd (www.cutwel.co.uk) is celebrating its 20th year of supplying high-quality tooling to the engineering and manufacturing industry. The company — owned by husband-and-wife team Paul and Mary Hawksworth — started up in 1996, operating from a small converted house in Mirfield.

With only one sales person — Nikki Everitt (who is still with the company) — it established a relationship with South Korea’s YG-1, which became its first source of cutting tools. Two years alter, the Korean-made Korloy brand of indexable tooling was added.

After seven years of growing its portfolio and taking on more staff, Cutwel outgrew its original offices/warehouse, so it acquired a warehouse in nearby Dewsbury — and four years later, growing demand led to the purchase of another building in Dewsbury that was seven-times larger.

In 2010, three new suppliers came on board — Benz and Karnasch of Germany and Gerardi of Italy. Benz and Gerardi marked Cutwel’s move into work-holding and tool-holding solutions; their ‘arrival’ prompted the creation of the first Cutwel Catalogue. In 2012, the company began targeting the routing and metrology industries by introducing products from suppliers such as Insize, LMT Onsrud and LMT Belin.

In 2013, Cutwel was appointed Gerardi’s sole UK distributor. At the same time, it gained new suppliers Chandox and Lihsun, offering lathe chucks and revolving centres. Later that year, the company relocated to its current headquarters in Cleckheaton, with a warehouse boasting 25,000sq ft of storage space.

Shortly after, it launched Hawk 3D Proto — a division dedicated to 3-D printing and additive manufacturing — as well as a new e-commerce Web site. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the owners held a company event at Doncaster Racecourse towards the end of June.

The company is also marking its 20th year by offering a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer on all cutting tools.