Gavin Johnson has rejoined Baldor UK as general manager after a spell as sales director with Baldor’s linear motion products division in California, USA.

Gavin Johnson has been promoted to general manager of Baldor UK. He rejoins the UK company - where he started in 1998 as a sales engineer - after a spell as sales director with Baldor’s linear motion products division in California. Johnson has a degree in mechanical engineering, and has spent his entire career in areas related to motion control and industrial automation.

Starting with a University sponsorship by Land Rover, where he worked primarily in engine testing, he went on to engineering and sales roles with companies including GEC, linear drives and Eurotherm Drives.

Johnson is optimistic about motion control markets, and sees a return to strong growth over the next year, driven largely by the new performance possibilities offered by linear motors.

‘The motion control sector has been bumping along for a while now, but we’re starting to see a lot of development effort, led by sectors such as semiconductor equipment’, says Gavin Johnson.

‘Baldor’s current experience is characterised by engineering-intensive involvement in projects: as the market starts to pick up we expect to see it led by equipment launches emphasising state of the art motion technology, soft- and network-intensive architectures, for example, and linear motion.’ Gavin Johnson takes over from Miles Clee, a former director of Optimised Control Ltd, the developer of the Mint motion language and NextMove motion controllers acquired by Baldor in 1997.