Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
It has been a busy week at the MTA, we have held our AGM, hosted a Parliamentary Reception, launched a new website and elected a new President of the Association.
The AGM, held on the 6th December, saw the MTA Presidency pass from Guy Mollart to Geoffrey Bryant, Managing Director of Citizen Machinery UK. Geoff will be President of the MTA for the next two years taking us up to 2018, read more about the AGM and the Presidential Election in the below story.
Later that day Iain Wright MP addressed members at a Parliamentary Reception, in the House of Commons. Mr Wright, the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee called for an end to short-termism in Government policy and highlighted the need for “long term policy direction” in respect of Industrial Strategy. Read more of what he had to say within the Brief.
We are also very pleased to announce the launch of the new MTA website, which went online this Tuesday. It is important that all members read the story below and download the user guide to ensure you can make the most out of your online profile. We have taken a lot of time to ensure the new website now has responsive design to make it even easier to navigate, update and enjoy on mobile devices.
The MTA are looking to take a delegation to IMTEX 2017 in Bangalore, India from 26 January - 01 February 2017 and we would ask member companies if they would be interested in joining the trip. If you would like more information, please contact MTA Head of Events James Fudge via email at jfudge@mta.org.uk for more details.
The Integrated Manufacturing Group of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing has been working with DESTACO, a leading global supplier of high-performance automation, work holding and containment fixturing solutions to help create a virtual workshop to assist with pre-production and factory planning processes.
Detailed plans for a new state-of-the-art training hub in Shropshire were unveiled for the first time yesterday, with the aim of supporting ‘2020 learners by 2020’. More than 100 local businesses and stakeholders attended the £3m Marches Centre of Manufacturing & Technology (MCMT) launch event in Bridgnorth to find out how they can play their role in helping it reverse the region’s skills and competency gaps.
With the switch to the new MTA web-site, there has been a small delay to the data collection phase of the MTA Business Survey for November, but we are still hoping to get this completed next week. Therefore, if you have not done so already (and with thanks to those who have responded), we would encourage you to submit your return via the on-line form at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-nov16 - we hope you will be able to take part and look forward to receiving your return.
The manufacturing output data published this week was a little mixed, although overall, the key sectors for the manufacturing technology suppliers remain divided between the good (Automotive and Aerospace) and the bad (Machinery and Metal Products), but with nothing we could really call ugly! There was a sharp fall in output in the oil & gas sector that was put down to a temporary shutdown in one of the major oilfields. There are two lots of data for Europe this week; the GDP figures showed every economy growing in the 3rd quarter of 2016, although some only just and R&D expenditure in 2015 was at the same level as in 2014, but remains behind major competitors such as Korea, Japan and the USA.
That is all for this week, we hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy checking out the new MTA website, we will be back next Friday with more industry news.
