Hello and welcome to the Friday Brief for the 17th of January 2014.
As the festive season recedes into the distance the New Year is really picking up the pace. That means that the MTA’s Annual Gala Dinner, and the unrivalled opportunity it presents for networking, is almost upon us. If you’ve been putting off booking your places until now, don’t delay so you won’t miss out.
Also picking up the pace is the High Value Manufacturing Catapult which links centres of excellence around the country such as the AMRC and the MTC. Chancellor George Osborne visited the latter yesterday and the MTA was there to hear what he had to say…
The New Year also sees the publication of datasets relating to the old with, mostly good-ish, stats coming out of Europe for the latter part of 2013. There is growth too to be seen in the recently published 2012 figures for UK Machine Tool production. You can find out all the detail in the story.
Coming up in February is the CCMT Trade exhibition in China. Quite a few MTA members are exhibiting either directly or through agents; if you are one, then be sure to get your details to us in time to be included in our guide to UK companies, full details below.
We finish the Friday Brief this week with a couple of short articles about new technologies. Firstly we have news of an opportunity to learn more about plastic electronics fabrication technologies at a one day conference being run by the EPSRC Centre for Ultra Precision, which features a fascinating line up of experts from industry and academia. Secondly we have news of the latest frontier being broached by the 3D Printing industry - Chocolate. Seriously.
Have a good weekend.