Good morning and welcome to the Friday Brief for the 13th November.
The MTA's AGM will be held on the 2nd December at the IET Building at Austin Court in Birmingham. There will be a Member's Forum event before the AGM itself and a Lunch afterwards. Details including how to book you place are in the story below. The other main piece of news from the MTA this week is that the Exhibitor Manual for MACH 2016 has gone live. You can find out how to access all your needs for the Exhibition through the link below.
As well as blustery weather it seems to be the season for Conferences at the moment and hot on the heels of the Trends in Aeropsace Manufacturing (TRAM) Conference held this week at Magna near Sheffied, on which we will carry a report and links to papers next week, we're delighted to announce that the MTA is partnering with the MTC on a major Conference on Industry 4.0, to be held on the the 26th November at the MTC. We have secured a 50% disount to the delegate price of £100 for MTA members. You can find out all about the event in the story below.
Following on from last week's MTA Forecast there have been quite a few economic announcements this week, but before we turn to them can we remind you that the MTA's Business Survey for October is due to close at the beginning of next week so if you haven' t completed it there's still time. We are also in midst of collecting responses to our survey on MTA members' views on the issue of BREXIT, the hottest topic at this week's CBI Conference at which the MTA was represented. Its vital that we speak with a strong voice on the issue so if you are contacted by one of our researchers in the next few days please take a few minutes to have your views registered.
Turning to those economic announcements; the overview from the Bank of England’s Agents report is fairly negative, although for our interests, it does not go much beyond manufacturing as a whole. For the detail, we need to look at the ONS figures which were published this week – these reflect a weak 3rd quarter but with signs that September was a better month as well as being in comparison with what was a relatively strong 2nd quarter; the ONS figures certainly don’t point to a major slowdown, except perhaps for the Machinery industry (for reasons that we discussed last week in our report on the latest MTA forecasts). Similarly, the relatively poor numbers coming out of the USA also suffer partly from comparison with a very strong 2014 and they share the view that the outlook once we get into 2016 remains positive, especially for the Automotive and Aerospace sectors.
Stay Lucky.