Somta at EMO Hannover 2013
David Risk, Lance Hockly and Allan Conolly in front of the Somta stand at EMO Hannover 2013
A team of 6 people from Somta Tools (Allan Conolly – Managing Director, Neil Hockly – National Sales Director, David Risk – Export Sales Director, Lance Hockly – Carbide Manager, Ossie Patterson – Technical Manager and Derek Walden – Export Sales) recently attended EMO (the world’s largest industrial tool show) in Hannover, Germany held from the 16th to the 21st September.
The company had its own booth at the show displaying its products, and had the goal of generating new business for the company. As an idea of competition, there were probably in the order of at least 200 other suppliers displaying similar products – with an increasing number coming from the East (China, Taiwan etc).
The Somta stand, whilst small compared to many, was very professionally laid out and the marketing team did an outstanding job – we can all be very proud of the excellent job they did.
We saw many of our existing customers at the show, and also met many new potential customers. Members of our team also met with many of our various suppliers, looking to understand what new technology was available and how could this benefit Somta.
The show was well attended and many people we spoke to indicated that they expected a steady but slow improvement in the world economy. No one predicted that things would get worse over the next few years which was encouraging to hear.
The key areas of potential for Somta resulting from this show are…
- Very good potential for new orders from a large European distributor for our new Solid Carbide VariCut End Mill in the near future. In fact this customer said that some of our tools they had been testing were outperforming the best in the world! This is likely to lead to a demand for increased capacity in the carbide plant.
- With key partners (Schwarz) we have recently opened up Somta Europe with stock in Stuttgart Germany for quick distribution to the European market – lots of potential and lots of interest for carbide and HSS.
- Good potential growth opportunities with Ceratizit – the company for whom we are carbide insert agents in South Africa.
- New opportunities in Canada and USA with a key partner – this could result in substantial volumes of carbide and HSS product.
In summary this was a very good show for Somta that I am sure is going to yield some exciting new business for the company. The team that was there worked very hard and you can be proud of the way they went about their business.
We hope to be able to update you with some tangible results in the coming weeks and months.
Allan Conolly
Managing Director
