Welcome to the Friday Brief for 21 February 2014.
The next MTA Members’ Quarterly Meeting will take place on Wednesday 12 March at Delcam’s headquarters in Birmingham. The theme will be “Changing the Skills Landscape” and speakers will include Alison Bettac, Director of Training at the AMRC. There will also be presentations on best practice and members’ experiences relating to skills development.
The floods that have affected many parts of the UK over the past weeks seem at last to be receding. The Government this week announced a £10 million scheme to help businesses affected by the floods get back on their feet. We have details in this week’s Friday Brief.
We have news about a networking event open to members and exhibitors to be held on 7th April at MACH 2014 with Czech manufacturing technologies businesses looking to partner with UK firms to manufacture in this country. There is also a reminder that Monday 24 February is the deadline for exhibitors to submit their entries to the MACH Show Guide & Product Locator, via the MACH 2014 Website.
There are details this week of the UK Government supported Export Control Symposium 2014, designed to help the UK’s exporters (particularly SMEs) of controlled goods, which will take place on Thursday 3 April at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.
This week’s economic data is led by the latest figures for European Industrial Production for December 2013. Data from Eurostat shows that total industrial production (which comprises manufacturing, extraction, energy production and utilities) was -0.7% lower than in November 2013 for both the Euro-Zone and the EU28 as a whole.
Finally, following last week’s Friday Brief story about the manufacturing industry supported recruitment database provided by TRS we have a story of how a SME in the North East has successfully used the database to recruit.
Have a good weekend.