Good morning and welcome to another jam packed week of Friday Brief news.
Firstly, a warning, the MTA has become aware that fraudulent invoices relating to MACH 2016 are being circulated to past and present exhibitors. If you have any doubts as to the validity of the documentation please call 020 7298 6400 and check with us.
With the general election coming up in a few short months the electioneering process has started. Here at the MTA we have details of all the candidates so far declared, whether sitting MPs or prospective challengers. If you’d like help attracting them to visit your business, or advice on how to handle a meeting, please contact the MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell at podonnell@mta.org.uk.
Does your company do business in Kazakhstan or do you have plans for expansion there? If so we’d like to hear from you as soon as possible to enable you take advantage of a UKTI sponsored trade event later this month. Again, please contact the MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell at podonnell@mta.org.uk.
There are some fantastic conferences coming up across the UK in the coming months. On 25th March the MTA is holding a Seminar on Industry 4.0 (otherwise known as the Internet of Things)at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), full details below. In other MTC news they plan to recruit a further 40 advanced engineering apprentices to take part in its advanced manufacturing training programme.
The AMRC will be hosting a 2 day conference on Factory 2050 between 25th and 26th March and will showcase the world’s first totally reconfigurable factory. The AMRC also announced this week that it will lead new £6m project to develop lightweight alloy for the aerospace industry.
The University of Birmingham has put together a seminar on ‘Advanced Manufacturing Process Technologies for High Value Components’. The event will be hosted by Mazak at their European Technology Centre, Worcester, UK and is supported by the MTA. The event takes place Thursday, 19 March 2015 and has some fascinating speakers, notably on cryogenic machining.
The EU is engaged in its most ambitious programme of trade negotiations in history, worth over £20billion to the UK economy. The UK Government is committed to ensuring that UK priorities for all free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations fully reflect the views of the UK business community so we have been asked to carry consultation questions this week, see below.
We’d like to extend our congratulations to 600 Group who have won prestigious regional business award in the EEF/Aldermore Future Manufacturing Awards.
In Economic News, there is quite a bit of interest this week. The UK manufacturing figures were a bit mixed; overall, 2014 was not a bad year with modest growth in output, but for manufacturing as a whole, this was concentrated in the early part of the year, with definite signs of a levelling off at the end of 2014. However, the picture is not the same for Capital Goods (the main customer area for manufacturing technology) where, although the overall output figure was similar to that for manufacturing, the end of year numbers were more positive. We see something similar in the European picture and in the US the market for both machine tools and cutting tools is reported to have seen a modest increase in activity in 2014, with a generally positive view for something similar in 2015 – their industry is at a relatively high level, so we would not expect to see massive growth rates.
And finally we have some sad news to report, Les Marsh, the former Managing Director of SOAG and a longstanding MTA and CELIMO member passed away peacefully last Tuesday. Details of the funeral, to be held on the 23rd February, are below.
That is all for this week, we’d like to wish everyone a great weekend and we’ll back next Friday with more of the latest industry news.