Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
We start this week with the MACH 2018 press launch which took place at Land Rover BAR in Portsmouth yesterday. The event was well attended with members of the press and the MACH exhibition committee. Please see within the Brief for the exciting new developments that are happening at the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies showcase.
Wednesday saw the new Chancellor Philip Hammond deliver his first big parliamentary set piece, the Autumn Statement, MTA's Head of External Affairs Paul O'Donnell unpicks what this means to MTA members.
We have now loaded updated versions of the presentations made by John Walker and Jeremy Leonard at our Forecast Seminar last month. These files now include notes made during the presentations which will especially help those who were unable to attend the event. They are available on the MTA web-site at http://www.mta.org.uk/members-area/mta-forecast-documents or on request from Geoff Noon at MTA (e-mail: gnoon@mta.org.uk).
The MTA received the Silver Award as part of the Ministry of Defence’s Employer Recognition Scheme on Tuesday evening. The award is given to employers who have worked with the MoD over the last 12 months.
The MTA is working with the National Apprenticeship Service to ensure our members have access to up-to-date information and advice on Apprenticeships and the upcoming Apprenticeship Levy which will come into effect from April 2017. Please see the story below for more information or email education@mta.org.uk for more details.
Staying with education The MTA is collaborating with The Manufacturing Institute on a variety of projects, this week we have details on their Make It in Manufacturing Challenges, aimed at school children aged 13-14 years.
Welsh Government plans to invest £20 million in a new Advanced Manufacturing & Research Institute have been welcomed by Colin Sirett, Chief Executive Officer of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).
The AMRC has worked with Deeside Enterprise Zone Advisory Board, Swansea University, and Coleg Cambria to develop the new Institute in conjunction with SMEs and large companies.
The Institute will focus on research into and development of advanced manufacturing techniques and production processes for advanced manufacturing sectors including aerospace, automotive, nuclear and food. For more details on this exciting development please see the story below.
This week we have a number of unrelated but useful pieces of data to report on - the latest CBI Industrial Trends survey was slightly mixed with output growth slowing, but expectations for the next 3 months picking up; UK exports and imports of machine tools in the first three quarters of the year are more or less at the same level as in the same period of 2015; business spending on R&D grew to its highest level in 2015, accounting for 1.1% of GDP, and employment in this activity grew by 6% compared to 2014. We also have two reports available this week - the October edition of the CECIMO Statistical Toolbox and an economic report from CELIMO generated for its recent Tooling Group meeting.
That is all for this week, we'll be back next Friday.
