Good afternoon and welcome to the Friday Brief for the 19th July 2013.
We open this week’s Friday Brief with a welcome to the 19 new members who have joined the MTA in the last quarter. It’s great statement of confidence in the Association and industry that they have chosen to join us and we look forward to working with them in the future.
It’s also a warm welcome (can there be any other sort in the UK at the moment?) to the 15 companies who have booked into the Welding World Village for MACH 2014 this week. You can find out who’s going to be there below.
Wednesday saw the Annual Inter Association Golf Day at the Leicestershire Golf Club. It was a great day and our congratulations to all the competitors. You can find out who won what below.
As the heatwave continues, and summer holidays begin, we thought we’d bring you a couple of items in this week’s Friday Brief that are guaranteed to lighten up anyone’s day – Employment Law and Pensions.
The MTA can help you navigate the jungle of employment law and related areas through our partnership with market leading advice providers Croner. Just this week an MTA member of staff was visiting a company who were about sign up for an advice service for which they had been quoted a five figure sum. We were able to prevent them laying out that money by talking them through the service that you receive for free as an MTA member. You have access to both a helpline and an amazingly comprehensive set of help-sheets and guidance notes via the MTA website. More details below.
Over the last few weeks you may have seen giant posters of business figures (well people off ‘The Apprentice’ and ‘Dragon’s Den’) saying “I’m in” all over the country. They’re talking about auto-enrollment, the plan to ensure that everyone in the country has access to a workplace pension by 2017. There are a myriad of ways to do this and as an MTA member you can book an advice session with pensions advisors Gerrard Byrne for free, details of how are below.
We’ve news of investments of a different kind with a full list of the recent successful bidders for the 4th Round of Regional Growth Fund monies.
There’s also the latest on the new EMTE-EASTPO show scheduled for Shanghai next year, for which the pace is picking up.
Finally there are some signs of the pace picking up in the wider economy. Geoff Noon has a rundown of the indicators, including the latest PRODCOM figures and European numbers from CECIMO and CELIMO, in his regular weekly briefing.
Enjoy your weekend.