KASTO, a bastion of the German mittelstand with an annual turnover of €100 million, is celebrating 170 years since its formation and has entered its sixth generation of family ownership and management. To coincide with this anniversary, the group will unveil a revolutionary new product range on 7th May 2014 during an open house to be held at its headquarters and factory in Achern, southern Germany.
The company is saying little about its new product before the launch, but the implications are that it represents a major step forward in bandsawing technology and in the company's manufacturing process.
2014 will also be a big year in the UK. The following month, the Milton Keynes subsidiary will hold open days on 18th, 19th and 20th June at its showroom and technical centre in Milton Keynes. The new machine will be on show again, along with many other bandsaws, circular saws and hacksaws from the manufacturer's vast range of products. Automated warehousing of bar, tube, profile and flat material will also be demonstrated.
Before that, however, KASTO will exhibit at MACH 2014, which runs from 7th to 11th April at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. On stand 4518, the company will show a Unitower C storage tower for sheet metal and will focus on the latest developments in vibration management during sawing, demonstrated on the high-performance KASTOtec AC4 KPC.
Just as milling and turning machine vibration increases noise and compromises accuracy, surface finish and tool life, a similar situation exists in metal sawing. KASTO saws have the build quality, akin to that of a high-end machine tool, and other technological features to mitigate these problems and at the same time maximise productivity.
There has been more emphasis by the company in the past year on promoting its workshop / dealer range of machines, comprising smaller bandsaws, circular saws and hacksaws. This year's MACH will be the first time that all three ranges have been exhibited at a national exhibition. Aimed at jobbing shops, they are designed alongside the company's high-end sawing machines and are manufactured at the company's factory in Schalkau/Thueringen, Germany.
They range from pull-down models priced at a couple of thousand pounds to automatic machines costing ten times more. During 2013, marketed under the slogan 'quality for all budgets' and supported by a new website, they accounted for 35 per cent of sawing machine sales by value in the UK, up from 20 per cent the previous year.