Diamond tool company BV Diamond Products Ltd, based in Birstal, West Yorkshire, has recruited a Sales Engineer to represent the company in the South of England.

BV is well established in the North of the country but not so well known in the South. The new engineer, South African Craig Cramer, intends to change that.

Trained by Otto Bayerl, who Craig describes at “the best saw doctor in the world”, Craig now lives in Portsmouth, having moved to the UK with his English-born wife at the beginning of last year.

He started his career in the diamond tool business in 1996 with Diamond Winter, which is now Winterstone. Craig had a friend working at the company who told him about a vacancy for a workshop manager. He applied for the job and was appointed.

Winter sold big block saws for cutting granite and the diamond blades and wires they used. After seven years, Craig left the workshop and went out into the field to visit customers to service their machines, retipping and tensioning their 3m blades.

When Winter pulled out of South Africa in 2011, Craig established his own company, called Diamond Tools, which he continued to run until he moved to England last year.

He arrived in the UK on 14 January, with just enough time to get settled in before the Covid-19 shutdown. He had a job cutting metal with a company called Conder Allslade, which closed down in January this year with the loss of 50 jobs, including Craig’s.

Craig contacted Winterstone in Germany who put him in touch with BV in Yorkshire, which supplies Winterstone tools in the UK.

BV has now taken him on to develop trade in the South of England. “I’m going to be marketing the product,” he says, “retipping and tensioning blades and selling new ones, including diamond drills.”