Dugard welcome Colin Thomson to the sales team

The Dugard portfolio continually evolves to meet the diverse needs of the industry, which lead to the appointment of Colin Thomson to support ongoing growth of the Hanwha brand.

Joining the company in January as the new product sales manager, Colin will manage the new range of Hanwha sliding head turning centres throughout the UK.

We were appointed as the UK agent for the South Korean Hanwha brand at the tail end of 2018 and to ensure its success, we have invested in a sliding head specialist to manage the brand and offer UK manufacturers an alternative to the historically monopolised sliding head sector. The Hanwha range of machines will also be supported by our existing sales team, enhancing the product portfolio available to 1000s of existing Dugard end users.

With almost 30 years in manufacturing, Colin started his engineering career as a machine shop apprentice at a prominent aerospace subcontract company in Essex. Over his 14 year stint, Colin’s enthusiasm and professionalism propelled him to team leader.

Leaving this post in his late 20s, Colin has since cut his teeth in technical sales and account management by working with some of the industry’s leading machine tool and cutting tool manufacturers. With much of this period spent with a prominent sliding head lathe manufacturer, Colin is ideally positioned to give the Hanwha brand a foothold in the niche industry segment. Commenting on joining Dugard, Colin said: “When this opportunity came along, it was too good to refuse. The opportunity to join a company like Dugard and disrupt the market with a completely new brand is really exciting. I thrive on the challenge of selling the technical features and benefits to end-users and with Hanwha, we have a genuinely market disrupting brand.”

Why Buy a Hanwha?

“The Hanwha sliding head turning range has the technical attributes to compete with leading brands whilst offering a significantly more attractive price-point. The machines are available with FANUC or Siemens CNC unit and Hanwha has worked closely with Siemens to enhance both the drives and controls of the range. This means that a Siemens controlled Hanwha can provide 23kW power on both the main and sub-spindle. This is unparalleled in the sliding head market and this uncompromising level of power will put the Hanwha machines in a different league when targeting the fixed-head lathe market that manufactures small to medium sized components. Likewise, this colossal level of power is ideal for manufacturers that demand high material removal rates on challenging materials.”

“Another salient point about the Hanwha is that it is the only siding head brand that has a true 42mm diameter capacity guide bush offering. When removing the guide bush, this machine capacity reaches an unprecedented 45mm, far exceeding the capacity of competitor machines. With more power and greater capacity, features backed by superior precision and productivity characteristics, the future of the sliding head industry in the UK is destined to be very interesting” concludes Colin.

Email Colin at [email protected] for any information on our Hanwha range of sliding head CNC lathes.