Gosport-based Geo Kingsbury (www.geokingsbury.com) has appointed Richard Hughes as sales director (milling, turning and grinding), with the remit to promote four of the ranges of German machine tools that the company sells exclusively in the UK and Ireland.

They are: single- and multi-spindle turning machines built by Index and its subsidiary Traub; three- to five-axis machining centres manufactured by Hermle; and grinding machines produced by Haas Schleifmaschinen.

Geo Kingsbury set up a new Grinding Technology (GT) division earlier this year in its Birmingham office on Blythe Valley Business Park to service the latter agency.

This is where Mr Hughes will be based, working alongside the firm’s Large Prismatic Machines (LPM) division, which promotes the other agency lines — Burkhardt + Weber, F Zimmermann, SHW and Waldrich Coburg.

Mr Hughes joins from another multi-agency machining-centre and lathe distributor in the Midlands, where he was technical director for eight years.