Dormer Tools celebrates centenary

IT started life as The Sheffield Twist Drill company and has grown into an international business with subsidiaries in 25 countries.

Now Dormer Tools is preparing a series of events to celebrate the company’s centenary in 2013.

Simon Winstanley, marketing co-ordinator at Dormer UK, said: “The last 100 years has witnessed previously unimaginable advances in the technological and scientific world: the mass production of motor vehicles, powered flight and space travel, the birth of the nuclear age and the development of the telecommunications industry.

“Dormer’s products have helped to write the history of this industrial progress and it is here, in the millions upon millions of components that have been drilled, reamed, cut, threaded or otherwise shaped by the company’s tools, that the real history of Dormer lies.”

Dormer was the first drill manufacturer in Europe to introduce the ‘steam temper’ treatment to its products and in the 1980s was one of the first companies in the country to pioneer online ordering.

Its centenary coincides with the 100 year anniversary of the discovery of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield and the 200 year anniversary of the birth of Sir Henry Bessemer who revolutionised steel manufacturing.

The company is now part of the Sandvik group.