East Staffordshire-based metrology specialist Blum-Novotest (www.blum-novotest.com) has recorded its best-ever month after securing over £100,000 of orders for its ‘in-machine’ measuring technology, which helps industry to significantly reduce the time taken to measure cutting tools.

The company, which celebrated 18 years of trading in the UK last year, says that this sum represents a 60% year-on-year increase, with most of the new contracts involving the firm’s Digilog family of touch-probe systems.

The Burton-upon-Trent company is now looking to build on this positive start to the year by increasing its work with SME sub-contractors through the appointment of Paul Hodgkinson as a dedicated technical sales engineer for the UK.

Managing director David Mold said: “With all the uncertainty around Brexit, I was half expecting the first quarter to be extremely tough, with investment decisions put on hold, but we have actually seen the opposite.

"New orders have been placed by both the dealer network and end-user customers, with interest coming from clients involved in the automotive, aerospace, medical and nuclear sectors.

"Whenever there is a need for repeatable quality, accuracy and quicker turnround times, we have the answer. I think it’s fair to say that Digilog — with its ability to measure ‘in-machine’ — is proving extremely popular and we expect this range of probes to be our best seller in 2019.”

New recruit Mr Hodgkinson brings with him an extensive network of contacts and more than 11 years’ experience of working in the industrial automation and machine tool sectors.

He said: “I’m looking forward to helping the team increase the pipeline of possible sales across all of our target sectors.

"My job will be to get to know the pain points of SMEs and how we can use our solutions to help them improve their manufacturing performance, speed and quality. There’s already a number of potential firms that have never used our products before but are keen to find out more.”