Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
You can read MTA’s Head of Externals Affairs, Paul O’Donnell’s, take on this week’s political goings on.
The MTA have several opportunities to support member companies wishing to expand in to foreign markets. The MTA will be representing UK business in Germany, USA, Turkey, Japan, India and Russia over the coming year and we have access to funding from UKTI to support some of these missions to international exhibitions.
If you’re are interested in any of the opportunities in the story below, please contact the MTA’s Head of Events for more details jfudge@mta.org.uk.
The Government has introduced a new Apprenticeship Levy that will come into effect on 6 April 2017. Please see the below story and attached document explaining the changes.
Cranfield University is offering a special £2,000 bursary towards the cost of this programme for UK SMEs. This is to help SMEs invest in boosting productivity, strengthening the product development pipeline and securing a firm grip on continuous improvement in the post-Brexit landscape. Members of the MTA are entitled to apply for a further £2,000 grant, bringing the overall cost down from £9,500 to £5,500. More details on this exciting opportunity can be found within the Brief.
The AMRC Forum are holding a series of networking seminars featuring presentations from industry experts. There next event will be held from 9:30 to 13:00 on Wednesday 21st September 2016 at the AMRC Knowledge Transfer Centre in Rotherham. The event will consider latest developments in machining of composites. It will feature presentations from: BAE Systems, Mori Seiki, OSG, Alicona, MetSoftPro and the AMRC Composites group.
Rolls-Royce and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult launched a National Strategy in Through-life Engineering Services (TES) on 5th July in London.
Dutch company STYLE CNC Machines are on the lookout for a UK Agent, for more details on this opportunity can be found in the story below.
The main data series this week is the industrial output figures for May from Eurostat which show a significant fall compared to April, but it does now appear that the April figures were artificially high and the underlying trend remains one of a very gentle increase edging the level back to its post-recession peak seen in the middle of 2011. Data on machine tool and cutting tool business in the USA continues to show a decline compared to a year ago, with the machinery business more affected than for tooling; it appears that the impact of the strong US$ on manufacturing output and investment is continuing, although there does appear to be an expectation that the 2nd half of the year will see a turnaround.
That’s all for this week, we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news, until then, have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.