The MACH 2006 exhibition came at the right time for Matchmaker M/C, as it was the first major opportunity for the re-named company to put itself before the general engineering public.

The MACH 2006 exhibition came at the right time for Matchmaker M/C, as it was the first major opportunity for the re-named company (it was previously known as Yamazen UK) to put itself before the general engineering public. Following a management buyout in January of this year, co-directors Colin Donhue and Mike Maskell now have complete control of the Surrey-based machine tool distributor. As Colin Donhue explained: 'MACH was a very positive experience for us this time around - unlike two years ago when the mood of the show was subdued.

We had a good number of visitors to the stand, received a healthy level of enquiries and took several orders.

While most people knew something about our name change, the exhibition provided us with the ideal opportunity to fill in some of the gaps and outline our future strategy.

Both the Mitsubishi horizontals and Matchmaker VMC machines attracted good levels of interest.' In one sense, things have gone full circle with the name of Matchmaker coming to the fore once again.

For back in the 1970s, Matchmaker Machine Tools started selling Matchmaker machines with Posidata and Heidenhain controls.

Some 20 years on the company was acquired by the Yamazen organisation of Osaka while in 2001 the Matchmaker brand was resurrected with the introduction of low cost vertical machining centres.

And in January of this year, the company was finally bought back from Yamazen and renamed Matchmaker M/C .

As co-director Mike Maskell commented: 'We are excited about the future as we now have much greater flexibility in terms of the machine tools we can sell.

Currently, we are looking at a number of new products to add to our portfolio.' The process has already begun with a couple of new additions to the Matchmaker stable - the Mini Mill 610 and the VMC 1600.

While neither machine was ready in time for the MACH show, both machining centres will be available in a few weeks time.

In typical Matchmaker tradition they combine precision and performance with productivity and value for money.

They join the other Matchmaker models - the VMC 820, VMC 1100 and the HSM 1000 (with the Heidenhain iTNC 530 control) - as well as the Mitsubishi DCH series of high speed horizontal machining centres and the M-V series of verticals.

Having moved to modern 18,000 ft2 premises in Leatherhead just a couple of years ago and now back under British ownership, the future for Matchmaker M/C looks highly promising to say the least.