Nine orders worth some £2 million were placed at Citizen Machinery UK’s first Open House at its new Midlands turning centre of excellence in Brierley Hill.

Moreover, the company says the order total is likely to double in the immediate aftermath of the event.

Attendance over the three days (14, 15 and 16 May) exceeded 300; it included OEMs and sub-contractors from the UK and Ireland, as well as from continental Europe.

Four products were launched, all of which benefit from Citizen’s patented LFV chip-breaking software.

They were the new L32-X, L32-XII and D25-VIII Cincom sliding-head bar autos, on which the software is optional, and the Miyano BNA-42GTY — the first Citizen fixed-head lathe to have the addition of LFV in the operating system of the Mitsubishi control.

Another 11 machines were on display cutting metal.

The Open House featured a ‘Made in the Midlands’ networking event on the last morning, in which 50 people from local member companies participated.

Citizen Machinery UK’s deputy managing director (www.citizenmachinery.co.uk), Darren Wilkins, announced that the company’s sales in the UK and Ireland reached a record high of 164 machines in 2018, making the company the market leader for the supply of bar turning automatics; the first quarter of 2019 saw it also become the leading supplier of sliding-head lathes in the UK (as well as the whole of Europe).

Mr Wilkins says much of this success is down to the introduction of LFV software.

While the presence of supplier companies at machine tool Open Houses is not new, 20 firms were represented at this event; and unusually, four of them have permanent display booths adjacent to the new showroom: Citizen Finance, work-holding specialist Hainbuch, tooling supplier Floyd Automatic Tooling, and 1st Machine Tool Accessories (in addition to selling work-holding equipment, the latter is the UK agent for Iemca bar magazines, which are fitted to most Citizen lathes).