Pat Sharkey Engineering
After 23 years of selling Spielvogels into the UK market, Pat Sharkey Engineering has decided to expanded its participation in the machinery market by taking on agencies for CMG edge polishers, EmmeDue CNC bridge saws, Danzini quarry chain and wire saws and Sigma water treatment plant.
Pat Sharkey and his son Neil are best known for installing and maintaining machinery, but with the shake up there has been in machinery supply in the UK, with previously major players such as Pisani, CRL Stone (formerly Ebor) and Harbro having retreated to leave room for newcomers such as Roccia and Breton UK, Pat Sharkey Engineering felt there was room for another supplier.
Pat and Neil’s approach has been cautious to test demand. Neil says: “We work with masons from the top to the tail of the country and a lot of people say they need to buy machinery, but they haven’t got the confidence to buy right now. It’s the same in all sectors of the stone industry.”
But Pat adds he does feel investment decisions have been put off for so long now that demand is becoming pent up and at the first sign of recovery there could be some quite significant expenditure.
Neil spent six months looking for the machines he felt were right to expand the portfolio of Pat Sharkey Engineering. For masonry workshops, he wanted machines that could be easily installed in factory units without having to dig up the floors.
He says: “There are customers out there we have long term relations with and they often ask us for advice on what machinery they should buy. They would then go and buy them from someone else. Now we can tell them: Yes, we can recommend this and you can buy it from us.
“We still deliver what we have always delivered in terms of spares, maintenance and servicing, but now we also deliver a quality collection of new machinery.”
Emmedue machinery was already being sold in the UK by the Waters Group but Waters also sell the French Thibaut range. Emmedue felt products such as its four axes Discovery bridge saw and top-of-the-range Zenith Variaxis were in competition with the Thibaut products and are happy for them to be sold by a company that does not have what Emmedue sees as a potential conflict.
Pat Sharkey Engineering is continuing to represent Germans Spielvogel. Pat Sharkey can’t even guess how many Spielvogel primary and secondary saws and jenny linds he has sold into the UK stone industry in 23 years and they were being exported to the British Isles before he started selling them.
The first went into the masonry workshop of Francis N Lowe in Derbyshire and memorial wholesaler Frank England. They are still working and still being maintained by Pat and Neil.
Lately, the Spielvogel Pelican has proved popular with companies looking for ways of tackling dust and vibration issues for masons.
The Pelican is a semi-automatic jenny lind that can mill, drill, calibrate and polish edges and surfaces. It is available in various configurations, including both
free-standing and wall-mounted versions.
It is typically solid, vibration-combatting German engineering and comes with the choice of three different spindles, from 5.8 to 7kW, and the option of tilting and turning tables.