July 2026
VTT-WB and RGI France Announce Partnership
VTT-WB Ltd and RGI France are pleased to announce a new collaboration in vertical turning technology. Watch this space for the latest updates on our joint projects.
Manufacturing for Defence? Take a Look!
VTT-WB Ltd × RGI France — Joint Project Announcements
5 Axis Turning and Milling Machines
Capacities from 630mm to 8000mm diameter. Genuine turning power plus genuine milling power in one machine.
RGI France are represented by VTT-WB Ltd who, since 1993, designed and built the world leading Webster & Bennett Vertical Turning Centres and continue to support and upgrade them.
VTT-WB is responsible for sales, installation, commissioning and service for RGI France.
Vertical Turning & Plano Milling
RGI France and VTT-WB offer a very wide range of world class 2 axis vertical turning lathes and 3 axis vertical turning centres with capacities from 1000mm to 8000mm. Ultimate precision, ultimate productivity.
Also from RGI France — the Deltax range of plano milling machines with 2 axis CNC milling head (5 axes). Length options 4m to 26m, width 2m to 11m, height 1m to 2m. High precision for huge components.
The Partnership
VTT-WB Limited is a very unusual company. It is a British machine tool builder under British ownership.
The UK machine tool industry was one of the strongest in the world and during WW2 responded to Winston Churchill’s pleas to double, treble productivity, even more. The industry and the manufacturing population, male and female, responded to his leadership, out manufactured Hitler and saved the world from what we can only imagine.
Iain Exeter, M.D. of VTT-WB, was born during WW2 and has witnessed everything since. Successive governments and often poor management and politically motivated unions have deindustrialized the UK. Probably the best known machine tool company in the world, Alfred Herbert Ltd of Coventry, had employed up to 10,000 people and it was a disaster when it was allowed to be liquidated in 1981.
11 years later the whole UK machine tool industry was destroyed by the government of John Major over the Supergun and ‘machine tools for Iraq’ fiascos. Thousands of quality engineers lost employment and motivation as a result of this mindless action.
At this time Iain Exeter owned Wickman Bennett, then the UK’s largest machine tool builder with the product lines of Wickman multi spindle automatics and Webster & Bennett vertical turning lathes. What he lost and how he went on to build close to 100 world class vertical turning centers is detailed in the VTT-WB website.
He has spent the last thirty years trying to maintain some machine tool design and build capability in the UK. Why he does this goes back to 1961 when his father persuaded him to enter the machine tool industry rather than becoming a teacher. What his father said to him was echoed in 1989 by Harvard and persuaded him to buy and turn round Wickman Bennett.
Exeter is very cynical about UK government. For more than 18 months he has been trying to get politicians from all serious parties to understand how ‘de-industrialisation’ for the past fifty years has been the root cause of the UK debt growth and the frightening decline of the ‘white working class man’. ‘Re-industrialisation’ is a policy briefing document produced by Exeter and Professor Keith Ridgway, well known for founding the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) at Sheffield University.
Unable to find support in the UK, Exeter has turned to a superb machine tool builder in France — RGI France. In RGI France he sees a company that is very capable and very flexible, very much the quality and size that he would have taken Webster & Bennett to from where they were in Warwick in 2007.
VTT-WB will represent RGI France in the UK for sales of their machine tool range together with the services of installation, commissioning, warranty and planned maintenance service. VTT-WB will also support RGI France in America and Canada.
VTT-WB have their designs from Wickman Bennett machines built up until 2015 — these are still world class specifications and RGI France will support VTT-WB to build these and continue to develop them.
The collaboration of these two companies is making available to UK companies a superb range of machine tools.