In the second half of 2013 the Fair Friend Group (FFG) acquired MAG’s Industrial Equipment business, comprising the five brands Hüller Hille, Hessapp, Modul, VDF Boehringer and Witzig & Frank. This sale effectively ends MAG’s involvement in the CNC machine tool business, a step that had been widely rumored for several months prior to the sale last March of MAG Americas holdings (Giddings & Lewis, Cincinnati, and Forest-Liné) to the Fives Group, a French holding company.

The Italian machine tool manufacturers Jobs, Sigma, Sachman and Rambaudi are also in the FFG portfolio.

By November FFG made another acquisition, that of DMC of South Korea. FFG had in 2012 acquired a 50% stake in DMC and this latest acquisition of the remaining 50% shareholding makes the Taiwan-based Fair Friend Group one of South Korea’s top-three machine-tool manufacturers.

Headquartered in Busan, South Korea, DMC was established in 1944 and is one of South Korea’s oldest manufacturers of machine tools. DMC is one of the biggest shareholders of Samsung Machine Tools Corp., a listed machine-tool firm in South Korea. DMC specialises in the production of lathes, machining centers and tapping centers.

Ikegai Corporation acquisition
Now FFG has announced the acquisition of Ikegai Corporation, a Japanese company that has been in business since 1889, whose products include a range from CNC lathes, horizontal boring milling machines, machining centers, special purpose machines, injection moulding machines to marine engines.

These new FFG members include six century-old brands, and FFG is now also able to supply products such as automotive turnkey production lines and gear-making production stations. FFG owns production bases in China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and the US.

Fair Friend Group includes the Taiwanese manufacturers Feeler, Leadwell and Ecoca.