Hardinge moves on after flood damage

Flash floods that caused widespread damage in parts of Leicestershire and the East Midlands on Thursday 28 June have accelerated the previously announced UK headquarters move of Hardinge Machine Tools Ltd.

In February 2011, Hardinge announced that it was consolidating its two facilities in Leicester — Hardinge Machine Tools in Whetstone and Jones & Shipman Grinding Ltd in the north of the city.

The consolidation was progressing, but flood damage to the offices at Hardinge Ltd has necessitated an acceleration of the move (the offices were damaged by water entering through the roof structure, but the showroom and machine preparation areas were largely untouched).

By rapidly relocating the office operations to the J&S headquarters, telephone and computer communications have been fully restored to the original contact numbers, and the Whetstone factory premises are now back to full operation.

Martin Doyle, Hardinge UK sales and marketing manager, says: “There has been a massive team effort to both relocate and re-connect Hardinge into the J&S operation. The fact that we were up and running early in the following week is a credit to our whole team and those outside contractors we were relying upon, particularly for communications.
“Although parts of our operation are working under the same roof, both Hardinge and J&S retain their individual identities, which was always the intention.

The unfortunate events have accelerated our longer-term plans, but thanks to the efforts of all our teams we have kept disruption for customers to a minimum. In all respects, it is ‘business as usual’.”