Good morning and welcome to this week’s Brief. We had a few technical issues on Friday so please accept our apologies for the delay in receiving this edition.
As the country digests the implications of Brexit the MTA is taking stock of what needs to be done to protect the interests of the UK manufacturing technology industry. Aside from the universal desire to end the uncertainty that has been created – something not helped by the turmoil in both main parties - our early priorities are coalescing along the lines of; access to the single market, the ability of UK firms to recruit the people they need and the continuation, possibly under other guises, of R&D funding. We’ve already had discussions with officials at BIS and they have said that they will welcome input from the MTA about the issues that matter the most to industry. We are surveying members on this issue in this month’s Business Survey which is going live today, see below, but if you would like to discuss Brexit, what it means for your company and points you would like to get across please drop the MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell an email at podonnell@mta.org.uk .
This week saw the MTA co-host the second UK Industrial Surface Engineering Event with Cranfield University. You can read all about the event which bought academia and industry together below.
The Technology, Design and Innovation (TDI) Challenge final takes place next Wednesday (6th July) at Yamazaki Mazak’s European Technology Centre in Worcester. You can find out who made it to the final in the story below.
The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) are always keen to find ways to help you grow your business. As one way of making this happen, they’d like to invite you along to their monthly event tailored to manufacturing SMEs, the first of which takes places on Tuesday 12th July 2016. Find out how you can attend below.
The Purchasing Managers Indices (PMI) for both the UK and the Euro-zone showed an improvement in June, but it is worth noting that almost all of the data was collected before the Referendum and that this is not a confidence indicator – this is, perhaps a good point to encourage you to respond to the MTA Business Survey which launches today and will be our first opportunity to assess the mood of the sector following the Referendum (the form can be accessed at http://www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-jun16). Elsewhere in the world, the PMI trends were more mixed, but it does appear that the UK and the Euro-zone were picking up. This week also saw the ONS publish the UK National Accounts for the 1st Quarter of 2016, with no change to the previous estimates for growth despite a re-basing of the figures to 2013 prices; figures for investment were also released and they showed that although manufacturing investment as a whole was down slightly on a 12-month rolling trend, capital spending by the Engineering and Vehicles industry was up.
We'll be back at the end of the week with more industry news, until then have a great week from everyone at the MTA.