Making a statement
At more than 450 m2, Sodick Europe’s exhibition space is double
that of the Sodick brand’s usual MACH presence. In fact, it is one
of the top fi ve largest stands at the event. The company is making a
statement, having opened its new European headquarters in Coventry
last year. Andrew Allcock reports
Of cial opening of Sodick Europe’s
new Warwick headquarters took place
in July last year. Sodick UK agent
Sodi-Tech shares the location as a tenant,
but the two operations remain separate legal
entities, with Sodick Europe a 100%
subsidiary of the Japanese EDM, machining
centre and additive manufacturing expert
and Sodi-Tech remaining a private company.
Across the two operations, there are 47
employees, including resident Japanese
personnel from Sodick to provide technical
and commercial support.
The European headquarters location
provides support for 17 distributors serving
more than 35 countries, reaching as far as
Turkey, Russia and Africa – one of those 17
distributors is Sodi-Tech, of course. It has a
turnover of £60 million. Machine stock is
held in Rotterdam, taking in anywhere from
100-120 machines for distribution to those
markets. Previously located in Germany, the
decision to locate a new headquarters
building in the UK while Brexit remains
pending was underpinned by a number of
advantages that outweigh that, Peter Capp,
CEO of Sodick Europe and director of Sodi-
Tech, offers. Workforce skills and
commitment, the preferred English language,
cultural similarities and the business
environment were all factors in the UK’s
favour, he says.
The new building boasts 45,000 ft2 of
oor space, incorporating of ces,
temperature-controlled showroom, separate
temperature-controlled additive
manufacturing suite, training rooms and
spare part stores areas on a 1.2 hectare
site. The of ces, showroom and stores
areas today all look generously proportioned,
but this is a building spec’d for growth –
indeed, there is a further 10,000 ft2 already
permitted, with foundations already laid but
at the moment hidden beneath grass. The
previous location offered just 15,000 ft2,
by comparison, so the potentially 3.7 times
larger operation can support some serious
upgrading of activity.
Capp explains the thinking behind the
Japanese machine tool expert’s investment
in this stand-out facility. For one, it will
support the company’s plans for increased
market share by better supporting its
distributors, as he explains: “To increase
market share, we must bring all our
distributors up to the same high level of
training. At the moment that’s not the case,
they’ve all got different levels of knowledge
and technical ability. Now, the only way we
can get that technical ability up is to train
them, but we didn’t have the facility to do
that at our previous location. Here we have.
“We’ve set our programme out already,
actually, it started last month October and
will be running through next year. We will
move our distributors up a level from where
they are now, either three, two, or one.
Hence the training rooms that we have and
which we didn’t have at the previous
building. Sodi-Tech is at level one, of course.
We’re already a reasonable share of the UK
market, but we need to increase our other
market shares in places such as France,
Italy, Germany and Turkey; they’re the big
markets for us, along with Russia.”
As to the need for an air-conditioned
showroom, well, when you’re machining to
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