SIMTEK x Renovo: More Than a Supply Deal

6 days ago

5 min read

Forget the classic supplier-distributor relationship.

No stiff introductions. No corporate scripts. No "nice to meet you" and straight back to business.

We had Danijel Crnjak over to visit Renovo Solutions and Gilmour Tools - a tour round the factory floor, tooling conversations that just flowed, and hours getting to know each other over dinner. Somewhere in between it all, it became obvious: this partnership is about a lot more than products.

And it is more than products. This partnership goes well beyond the classic supplier-distributor relationship: Renovo will manufacture SIMTEK tools locally from their semi-finished products, to SIMTEK's quality standard - and supply their entire range, standard and special, directly to UK customers. That's the spirit behind our new partnership with SIMTEK, and it's why we're excited to bring their tooling range to more manufacturers across the UK.

Who is SIMTEK?

SIMTEK Präzisionswerkzeuge GmbH was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Mössingen, near Tübingen, at the foot of the Swabian Alps in Germany. As part of the wider SIMTEK Group, around 500 people across six global locations they design, produce and sell high-performance carbide tools for metalworking, and are present in more than 50 markets worldwide.

SIMTEK was built by challenging the norm: looking at what exists, asking how it could be better, and then doing something about it. That's a mindset we understand at Renovo, and it's exactly what drew us to this partnership.

Their standard range covers more than 10,000 tools across three core product families - simturn (turning), simmill (milling) and simcut (cutting-off and grooving), plus the Kaestner-Tools range. The tools span an enormous range of applications: grooving, turning, milling, broaching, thread whirling and polygon milling, with solutions starting from bores as small as Ø0.3mm right up to multirow disc milling cutters 200mm in diameter. Production runs under ISO 9001:2015 certified quality management, and as a family-run business, sustainability and long-term thinking are built into how they operate.

Why This Partnership Matters

Great products matter. But so do the people behind them, the ideas they share, and the trust they build.

That's what stood out during Danijel's visit - not a sales pitch, but a genuine exchange between people who care about doing the job properly. SIMTEK's approach to tooling - pushing past what's "standard" and engineering solutions to real machining problems - lines up closely with how we think at Renovo.

Under the new arrangement, Renovo takes on far more than distribution. We'll manufacture SIMTEK tools locally from their semi-finished products, built to SIMTEK's quality standard, and supply their entire range, standard and special, directly to UK customers. The goal isn't the lowest price; it's the solution that measurably grows our customers' margins, backed by local manufacturing and the support to get the most out of the range.

A Genuine Two-Way Partnership

This isn't a simple supply deal - it works both ways.

Renovo Solutions and Gilmour Tools will have access to captive blank products from SIMTEK for production of semi-standard and special tooling, while Renovo Tool Co takes on a distribution agreement covering SIMTEK's entire product range. Together, that combination means UK customers can get everything they need from one place - special inserts, special round tools, and standard SIMTEK product, in any volume.

It also means bringing real change to the UK tooling market. SIMTEK is a global player with serious production capacity — the number one supplier in several countries worldwide - yet relatively unknown here in the UK, where a handful of brands have held unchallenged market share for years. Renovo has always stood on three mottos, and rarely have they summed up a partnership this clearly:

Increase your bottom line.
Global scale, local access.
Production inserts, on time.

It's a fitting summary, because SIMTEK and Renovo also share a genuine passion for reducing customer costs, as SIMTEK put it themselves, "Increasing process reliability. Reducing process time. Lowering cutting costs."

Six Years in the Making

Our Managing Director, Antony Gray, had been pursuing a SIMTEK partnership for nearly six years, five of them unsuccessful. As Antony puts it, patience matters, and timing is everything.

That timing finally came together when Danijel reached out on LinkedIn. Antony was putting his daughter to bed at the time; the message reached his colleague Amy first, who passed it on while Antony was rocking his one-year-old to sleep. It took just three WhatsApp messages for Antony to know the previous five years of contact hadn't been wasted - he was finally speaking to someone at SIMTEK who understood Renovo's passion, vision and brand promise for the UK market.

A few video calls later, both sides could see a clear direction for the UK market. SIMTEK recognised the value of partnering with a business that combined an insert production facility, a round tool production facility, and a selling arm covering the entire UK marketplace - a combination that could serve every UK customer's needs, from special inserts to special round tools to standard SIMTEK product, in any volume.

But as Antony is quick to point out, the offering was never the whole story. What mattered more was the relationship. A face-to-face visit, a great meal, and a few frames of snooker later, it became clear: people still genuinely buy from people. For anyone who's lost sight of that, Antony's advice is simple - personal relationships, trust, and long-term strategy are what matter most.

"It's an absolute honour for Renovo Tool Group to be recognised and trusted to produce for and promote a global leader like SIMTEK. We're incredibly humbled, and we can't wait to get started with this exciting partnership. And best of luck next time on the table, Danny." - Antony Gray.

Finding the right tool: the SIMTEK Toolfinder

One of the things that makes SIMTEK's range so easy to work with in practice is the SIMTEK Toolfinder, their online tool selector.

Find the right tool for your application. Quickly and easily. Simply select the required specifications and find the right solution from over 10,000 standard tools.

Instead of trawling through a catalogue, you enter the parameters that matter for your job - machining method, application, dimensions - and the Toolfinder narrows down SIMTEK's full standard range to the tools that actually fit. For manufacturers weighing up options against tight tolerances or unusual bore sizes, it turns what used to be a lengthy specification process into a few clicks.

Combined with SIMTEK's willingness to go beyond the standard range and develop individual tooling concepts for specific applications, it means UK manufacturers now have a fast route to both off-the-shelf precision tools and genuinely custom solutions.