When PES last spoke to Abwood Machine Tools’ Rob Nicholas, the company was embarking on a considerable expansion plan that would take it to ‘the next level’. We caught up with him six months later for a quick status update, and to hear all about the launch of the company’s latest grinding machine.
PES: Since we last spoke, the solar sector in Europe (according to the headlines) has taken a dive. Is this being reflected in your order book? Or has business been positive for you?
Rob Nicholas: This is certainly a difficult time for the whole solar sector and unfortunately we have seen the same drop in sales for PV equipment over the past eighteen months as with the majority of European equipment manufacturers. With solar being our dominant sales market over the past few years this downturn has presented some issues in the short term, although interest in our products still remains high and we are confident that it is only a matter of time before we start to see an improvement.
We are also fortunate to have diversity of supply into other industries such as aerospace and bearing manufacture where demand is still strong and this has helped us to minimize the effects of the solar downturn on our business particular where staff levels are concerned.
PES: You were talking about your move into China in the last issue. How are things progressing in this regard?
RN: As we discussed in the last issue, we expected that the fully automated nature and low utility requirements of our machines would always be met with some resistance in a country with such low labour costs and abundance of natural resources; and this has proved to be the general feedback over the past six months although there have been a few exceptions.
We are currently conducting a feasibility study into producing a manually loaded version of our SS2 single spindle grinder specifically for this reason allowing us to offer all the advantages of our existing machines in terms of the grinding process but without the automation and process control demanded by European manufacturers.
PES: The company produces a number of products for the PV manufacturing sector. Is there one that is performing particularly well for you at the moment, and why do you think this is?
RN: We have refined our standard range of machines for the PV manufacturing sector to just three, all of which are capable of face grinding and chamfer grinding in one operation without user intervention. Of these three machines there has been particular interest from mono-crystalline wafer producers in our TS5 machine.
