A new partnership from MSC is aiming to help engineering companies access high-performance tools while keeping tighter control over costs.

MSC Industrial Supply Co. UK, a leading supplier of metalworking, maintenance, repair and operations supplies, has signed a supply agreement with cutting tool specialist ZCC Cutting Tools. The partnership will offer UK-based engineering firms high-quality solid carbide cutting tools from the ZCC Cutting Tools range at an affordable price.

MSC believes there are great synergies between the two businesses and cites ZCC Cutting Tools’ reliability, expertise and affordability as key to the partnership, which will help its customers access technical grade products in increasingly challenging market conditions.

David Wilsher, Director of UK Operations at ZCC Cutting Tools said: “The costs of raw materials, energy and shipping are all sharply rising. Businesses of all sizes are really feeling the pinch as they tend to have shorter order books than their bigger peers.

“Our partnership with MSC aims to help these companies by providing high-quality cutting tools at competitive prices and with short lead times. Smaller businesses are hurting, and they don’t have the size or scale to keep absorbing higher costs. With ZCC Cutting Tools products, manufacturers still get a technically excellent and versatile product but at a very attractive price point, helping them to reduce tool expenditure and save time.”

ZCC Cutting Tools technical grade products are competitively priced as it is part of the Minmetal group which owns its entire supply chain, right down to mining the minerals used to make its tools. The company serves the UK market from its European logistics hub to ensure rapid order fulfilment and also has a team of European engineers to support its customers’ challenges.

As with all MSC partners, ZCC Cutting Tools has a strong focus on customer service. With this in mind, ZCC Cutting Tools has trained MSC’s in-house engineers on its entire product range and MSC can leverage the technical expertise of ZCC Cutting Tools own engineering team to find solutions to specific challenges.

“ZCC Cutting Tools has the potential to really disrupt the market,” said James Howarth, Head of Category Management at MSC. “The pricing is way below what you would expect for this quality of product and is achieved because of the unique supply chain capabilities of its parent company.

ZCC Cutting Tools also knows the value of working with a client to understand their needs and supporting them throughout the product’s lifetime, which very much aligns with our ethos at MSC.”