WD Hearn celebrated its 80 years in business in March 2017!

The company’s origins stem from 1937 when it was started by the well decorated Brigadier W.D. Hearn, the late Officer Commanding of The Queen’s Own Cape Town Highlanders. After his retirement the company had various owners up until 1985, when members of staff including Ray Cooper, Don Brenton, George Mills and Bob Hamilton acquired the company in a ‘management buy-out’. Since then, Ray Cooper and George Mills remained on as the sole directors of the company until 2015 when George Mills retired and Ray Cooper took ownership of the company.

WD Hearn specialises in the sale of precision metal cutting machines. They offer a vast range of machine tools that cover virtually all toolroom, job shop, production and general engineering requirements, whether it is basic conventional milling and turning to complex five-sided multi axis CNC operations.

1997 saw WD Hearn breaking new ground by acquiring the national distributorship of Leadwell CNC machines of Taiwan. Leadwell specialise in stand-alone machining centers, turning centers, multi axis lathes, gantry type machining centers and drilling and tapping centers. To date over 1000 Leadwell machines have been installed in South Africa. The company has seen increased sales year on year since then with ‘high tech CNC equipment’ constituting 80% of sales.

The company’s vast customer base includes many of South Africa’s blue chip companies as well as a number of municipal and government entities. Yet the company has never forgotten their roots by offering the same quality service no matter how small a client’s company is. WD Hearn is striving to become South Africa’s leading machine tool importer and distributor.

“Our focus is on sharing ownership of the installation of equipment and technology into metalworking and general engineering companies in both application and through the expertise of our skilled technicians. Over the years we have built extensive product knowledge within the WD Hearn group in application, service and repair,” said WD Hearn MD Ray Cooper.