It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since I took over the wheel from our past President Albert Leblanc. Alot has happened during my first year as President.

We are finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel with regards to a rebound of machine tool sales in Canada.

Your association has continued to grow. We are strong financially and the future looks good. It has been a great pleasure for me to serve as President as I truly enjoy the opportunity of meeting our members, and the chance to discuss items in common, and to work with the directors for the betterment of our industry.

The Toronto Cricket, Skating & Curling Club was the scene for our 62nd Annual General Meeting. This was the second time we held our meeting at this new location and from all accounts, we had an excellent meeting and evening. A familiar face to most and our good friend Ralph Nappi, president of the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association (AMTDA) was our guest speaker. He addressed the group with his talk titled “Rebound: Strategies for Success”. For those who don’t know Ralph, he is an accomplished speaker and always has an extensive knowledge of industry trends for our marketplace.

Later, no fewer than 100 members, honourary guests, new members and invited guests in attendance heard from our different committees, pertaining to trade shows, membership, education, government relations and statistics.

CMTDA has a new director, Dieter Schill, president of DMG Canada Inc. Dieter has accepted position of director for the balance of 2004 and 2005 to replace John Manley who resigned earlier than his term due to business constraints.

Dieter’s business skills and knowledge will surely be a benefit to our association. His new responsibilities as director will be statistics. Welcome aboard Dieter.

For a change, all reports presented were of a positive note.What a change from only a few years ago. Based on our statistics report, machine tools, metal fabricating machinery and stamping equipment have shown clear growth.

However, on the downside, the dollar value of units sold has not risen at the same rate. As quoted by one of our directors, “Despite improved trading conditions, inability to raise prices (while operating costs are going up) is the main threat for builders and distributors”. As stated in my welcome message at our AGM, “Canadian manufacturers will only remain competitive by investing in machine tools providing increased throughput with less costs.” I think most of us can relate to this transformation.

I urge all of you to take advantage of the services and information provided by the CMDTA and the AMTDA. Our upcoming 2005 CMTDA Directory will be mailed out this year along with a future issue of Canadian Machinery & Metalworking. This will put our directory in front of some 20,000 plus readers. I hope you have your information up to date.

With regards to your information, as a reminder, CMTDA.com, our association's web page is working well; nevertheless, not all members have utilized this benefit to list their company's program. On the site you can list important contact information regarding your company, branch offices, contact personnel, change of product line information, etc. All of this can be done on demand. Beyond a doubt this is a great sales tool that we are providing for you.

CMTDA is not responsible for entering your company data, product lines, etc. This is a self-administered site to be completed by you. CMTDA has invested heavily into this web site, please take the time to complete and manage your section. If you have questions or need to know how to log in, please contact us.

Your CMTDA board of directors is working on plans for 2005, many issues that concern all of us are being worked on, and will be addressed in future issues of our newsletter or via e-mail. We have tabulated the results of our recent survey sent in October and I ask you to read the separate article in this newsletter regarding these results. We also have some social events planned for 2005; our annual Spring Boat Cruise on the Toronto Harbourfront is being planned with a new twist this year. In closing, I would to thank our membership for their support and continued confidence in the CMTDA. Special thanks to the board of directors, and Jim Burrows our executive director for their immeasurable time donated to our association. As we come to the close of this year, I would like to wish our members, associates and friends “Season’s Greetings.” CMTDA’s 4th annual golf classic a success

Best Regards Kurt Neiman, President

by CMTDA Executive Director Jim Burrows

Sales for machine tools in Canada show a rise in units of 12% and in dollars of 32% at September, 2004 compared to 2003. Average order size in CNC metal cutting was: horizontal spindle lathes, $187,000; vertical spindle lathes, $315,000; VMCs, $167,000; HMCs, $405,000; boring mills, $589,000; wire EDM, $177,000; sinker EDM, $123,000; grinders, $243,000; and CMMs, $120,000. New categories for 2004 are multi-tasking lathes at $325,000; milling machines at $119,000; and CNC saws at $140,000. Conventional metal cutting machines averaged $17,000. In CNC fabricating the figures were: press brakes, $114,000; turret presses, $367,000; laser profile cutting, $659,000 and an average CNC fabricating machine was $255,000. In non CNC fabricating, the average sale was $16,000, while metal stamping and forming averaged $48,000. New categories for 2004 include plasma profile cutting at $389,000; water jet profile cutting at $245,000 and other laser at $139,000. Our records show a significant increase in horizontal lathes, VMCs, HMCs, CMMs and laser profile cutting. CNC metal cutting machine tools have increased 34% in both units and dollars, CNC metal forming, 16% in units and 52% in dollars. Conventional metal cutting machines have dropped 5% in units and 14% in dollars from this period last year.

CMTDA hosted the Fourth Annual Golf Classic on Tuesday, August 24, 2004 at the beautiful Pheasant Run Golf Club just east of Newmarket, ON. The weather was a perfect late summer day, 24°C, and not a cloud in the sky. Pheasant Run is a par 72 course sculptured within a hardwood forest with lots of natural beauty, and it is a pleasant challenge. Scramble format rules were observed.

A total of 11 foursomes joined fellow CMTDA members for a day of fun and networking. The winning foursome comprised of Marc Burroni, Dave Ralph, Ted Van Wyk and Stan Krajewski, came in with a score of 6 under par. John Moody of MP&P presented each of the winners’ with a beautiful fairway driver and the winners’ trophy.

Larry Bonikowsky of CM&M presented four fantastic Blue Jay tickets (for an upcoming game against the New York Yankees this fall) to Stan Krajewski for the "closest to the pin" award. Next, Bob Mathieu, Reed Exhibitions presented Robert Renaud with a $100.00 LCBO voucher for achieving the "longest drive". Congratulations to our winners! We had many great prizes to give away this year. Golf clubs, golf apparel, Blue Jay tickets, watches, LCBO vouchers, Cross pen sets and so much more. Thank you to all of our sponsors for helping out with the prizes.

It was wonderful to see everyone who came out to make this day a great success. We had more women golfing with us this year, which was excellent. After the game, we all enjoyed drinks on the patio and a delicious dinner in the dining room. Tom Dillon of CIP, again looked after our wine tab. A draw for fabulous prizes concluded this enjoyable event.

CMTDA would like to thank Susan Perkins of Neiman Machinery and Jim Burrows of CMTDA for organizing this day.

Again, we would like to express our gratitude to our sponsors; MP&P, CIP, CM&M, Reed Exhibitions, Commerce Customs Brokers, CIT Finance, Iscar Tools, Royal Products, Wells Fargo, Matcom Industrial, Klad Rentals and G.E. Capital. Thank you to all! Next year’s CMTDA Golf Classic has been scheduled for August, 2005. Watch for more details to follow.

The CMTDA’s purpose and objectives

• To promote friendly business relations among its members
• To provide means whereby problems affecting the industry can be readily discussed and to co-operate, as a group, to further the interests of the industry by all desirable and lawful means
• To stimulate growth in the use of machine tools and secure wider markets for these tools
• To advertise the industry and the specific advantages attainable through the use of machine tools
• To make available information which will assist users and prospective users to obtain properly selected machine tools
• To collect and disseminate statistics on market capacity and other pertinent matters
• To exchange information among members for the purpose of reducing distribution costs and eliminating waste and duplication of efforts
• To enable the members, as a group, to discuss with the government, if need be, tariff problems and other issues relating to machine tools.

CMTDA Annual General Meeting
November 17, Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club