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Bill Hawkes retires
Published : June 25, 2009
A well-known personality in the machine tool industry, 65-year-old Bill Hawkes, sales director of Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools, retired in June 2009 after 18 years’ service with the company. His involvement with the industry goes back much further, however.
He went straight from school into the Royal Navy, where he received an engineering training during the 1960s and was a Petty Officer Artificer by the time he left in 1970.
In that year, he was employed by Cheltenham-based machining centre manufacturer, Moog Hydrapoint, as an assembly fitter, rising to the position of managing director by 1984. The operation was spun off from the US parent company and relocated to Gloucester, becoming CNC turning machine manufacturer, MHP Machines.
The firm was purchased by Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools in 1991 and renamed Geo Kingsbury MHP Machines. Bill remained managing director of the company. Eleven years later, the lathe manufacturing operation was consolidated into the group’s headquarters and factory in Gosport.
At that time he became sales director, responsible not only for the British-built MHP turning machines but also the range of German-built machine tools sold by Geo Kingsbury into the UK under sole agency agreements. It now comprises Index and Traub lathes, Hermle and SHW machining centres, and Dürr component cleaning machines.
Bill is a keen triathlete and currently chairman of the Gloucestershire Triathlon Club. His sport will remain a focal point of his retirement, as will walking in the Lake District and other beauty spots of the UK.
