EMCO Maier GmbH was established in Austria in 1947 to manufacture metalworking and woodworking machinery. Their manufacturing operations are in Austria, Germany and Italy.

Over the years EMCO has primarily specialized in lathes and milling machines. In their earlier years they also manufactured woodworking machinery, notably lathes and combination machines.

By the 1990s the company's lower-end product lines—notably, woodworking machines and hobbyist metalworking machines—were losing market share to low-cost competition from Asia. In 1996 a group of Emco managers and employees formed Profi Heimwerkermaschinen GmbH and bought out the Wolfsegg (Austria) manufacturing operations, being one of four Emco manufacturing plants and which specialized in the company's woodworking machines plus smaller machine tools aimed more at hobbyists than at industry. The acquisition included Unimat, Compact Lathes and Emco Woodworking machines; Emco Maier continued making the Compact 5 lathe which was marketed by Profi Heim. Only five years later, in July 2001, Profi Heim went out of business. This seems to mark the end of the Emco woodworking and hobbyist machine tool lines. The rest of Emco remained in business and continues today.

Emco's product lineup has evolved over the years. Early machines were manual but their product lineup is now entirely CNC. Since December 2011 EMCO is part of the Kuhn Holding GmbH.

Information Sources

• Lathes.co.uk page on Emco products (Unimat, Compact, Basic, Maximat, Super, etc., brands, and including metal lathes, milling machines and wood lathes).