Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
There is only one week to go to get your Ballot 2 applications in for MACH 2018. If you would like to apply for space please get in touch with the Samantha Jones, Head of Sales at the MTA on 07825 585864 or email sjones@mta.org.uk.
This week saw the Conservative Party Conference take place at the ICC in Birmingham. The MTA’s Head of External Affairs Paul O’Donnell was in attendance and you can read his report of the conference below.
An aviation spectacular will be landing at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing this autumn, when the Sheffield Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) hold their 150th anniversary celebrations on Tuesday 18 October. Members of the public are invited to check into the arrivals lounge of the pop-up airport at the AMRC and check out the two ‘hangers’ of demonstrations, exhibits and information stands telling the rich history and outlining the promising future of aviation and the aerospace industry in the local area. Find out how to attend in the story below.
Last week, as part of our Member’s Forum in Manchester intellectual property lawyers Mathys & Squire gave a presentation on IP strategy. You can find more information on this presentation below as well as the accompanying slides.
Our Partners in EAMA, the GTMA will be hosting a keynote event – ‘Brexit – What next for UK manufacturing’ on Wednesday 19th October at the GTMA Manufacturing Resource Centre in Alcester. Attendance is free, but registration is essential.
The latest MTA Business Survey is now online, we’d like as many members as possible to take part, you can access the on-line form at http://www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-sept16 - we look forward to your participation.
The main economic news this week was the very positive reading for the PMI for the manufacturing sector in the UK; although it is consumer goods that seems to have led the way to the reading of 55.4 (the highest since May 2014), comments in the HIS Markit report suggest that investment goods also saw a significant improvement. Although the boost to exports from a weak currency is behind this improvement (proof perhaps that every cloud has a silver lining), this is not the whole story as domestic orders have also increased. Also in the past week, we have seen the detailed investment figures for the 2nd quarter published and they show a trend that is generally flat to slightly down for business investment overall, for total manufacturing and for spending by the Engineering and Vehicles sector.
That is 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.
