Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
Sajid Javid has been announced as the new Business Secretary, MTA Chief Executive James Selka said: “We would like to welcome Mr Javid to his pivotal role. Business needs to be at the heart of our national life and we are sure that he will be a strong voice for business in Government and beyond.”
Close Brothers, in association with the AMRC Training Centre and the Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) are off erring to help your business grow by funding the next generation of advanced engineers. This unmissable opportunity will enable SMEs in the Sheffield City
Region to apply for financial support to employ an apprentice. More details on how to apply can be found in the full article below.
The MTA hosted a half day seminar on Bridging The Skills Gap on Tuesday of this week. The seminar was held at the MTC in Coventry and was well attend by MTA members and other delegates. We will be closing the latest MTA business survey on Monday so we would like to give one final reminder to members to partake in the survey http://www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-apr15.
Metalex which takes place from 18th – 21st November 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand, the show is UKTI sponsored with grants of £2,500 for eligible UK SME companies. For further information please contact KFinegold@mta.org.uk.
For Economic News, the UK manufacturing output numbers released this week were generally positive, although the overall growth rate is rather anaemic; digging into the industrial details, I think the assessment is a 3-1 victory with good growth in the Automotive, Aerospace and Metal Products industries outweighing the somewhat puzzling weakness in the Machinery industry. There was also some good news from the initial estimates of European GDP with the region showing modest growth in the 1st quarter and with France and Italy improving; growth in Germany slowed, but is still there and Spain continues to recover (although it still has a long way to go!).
And that’s all for this week, have a fantastic weekend and we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news. From everyone at the MTA have a great weekend.