Does Dalton actually own Wadkin or just sell Wadkin machinery? They used to have lots of refurbished machinery some of it was very old but people would prefer the older heavier stuff because of it's longevity
Dalton's bought the name designs, trademark and intellectual property rights of Wadkin the last time they went under. They manufacture a small range of classic machines as well as badging a few imports.
For decades, since the 1960s, Wadkin had imported many of the more high tech bits of kit they sold and marketed them under the "Wadkin Agencies" banner. In particular I recall them selling Weinig 4-siders as an alternative (cheaper, lighter, faster) than their own heavyweight machinery as well as both Casadei and Lurem kit They weren't alone in the UK, for example Startrite sold SCM kit for a long time under their own name and later on (after SCM had opened their own operation here) sold Robland kit rebranded "Startrite" whilst Interwood were another firm whon rested on their laurels and sold imported kit (in their case Altendorf, etc)
As to refurbishing old machines, there is a limit to what you can do in a cost effective manner. Most old machines lack adequate guarding and electrics (e.g. automatic braking, etc.). It is expensive to fit these, and refurbs become even more untenable should you need to replace e bearings and/or lost/damaged parts. Try finding spares of any description for most Robinson, White, Wilson or Sagar kit (all heavyweight manufacturers in their day and often on a par with Wadkin) and then look at the cost of maybe having a bespoke casting made up and machined and you'll understand what I am talking about. In view of this many dealers have taken to filling co trainers with old non-compliant kit and shipping it to places which are a lot less picky about safety. This is before we consider the extra cost of running old, electrically inefficient motors and what it means to production and cashflow to have a critical piece of kit go down for weeks while you source parts (if you can get them)
Even a small shop could gain a level of economy of scale that way if they did longer runs of items and started to specialize for instance with components or something like kitchen cabinet doors. I've not ever seen classical machines with programmable controls before. I've seen them on panel saws but they were made like that from new
To do volume kitchen doors and repetition work you need to reduce the labour content and using classic machines often won't allow you to do this. If you go down the route if CNC machining centres for doors you also end up having to invest in kit like a vacuum press, simply because outsourcing vinyl wrapping is too risky and spraying is not only a major fire risk, but is also labour intensive,time consuming and requires a fairly high level of skill. Some modern manufacturers of classic machines such as SCM, Martin, Panhans, etc have introduced machines such as CNC spindle moulders, normally with long arbors to carry stacked tooling, but they are pretty expensive bits of kit. Same goes for CNC 4-siders such as the modern Weinigs
You don't have to go CNC to survive, but if you want to go into volume I feel you don't have much choice, if only because it reduces dependence on finding experienced and capable staff