Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
MTA CEO James Selka is taking part in the Big Battlefield Bike Ride to raise money for Help the Hero’s. The 350 mile journey from Ypres in Belgium to Verdun in Holland and takes in some key World War 1 Battlefields along the way. We’d like to wish James all the best for this epic trek and if you’d like to support James’ charitable efforts you can donate to his Just Giving page here https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/james-selka1.
There was good economic news in two data series that have been released in the past week. The manufacturing output data that came out this morning showed that July was a good month for manufacturing and, in particular the Automotive industry which the ONS reports has seen new models come on stream, taking output levels back to very close to their record high levels; coupled with another record for output from the Aerospace sector in July and a recovery from what looks like a strange June figure in the Machinery industry, this was a good month, tempered only by a fall in output for the Metal Products industry. The Purchasing Managers’ data for August showed a very positive increase for the UK and most of the elements of the Euro-zone index - indeed, only 1 of the 25 countries and regions that we track had a PMI reading below 50 and that was the figure of 49.9 for South Korea, so they almost made it a clean sweep. The revised GDP figures for the Euro-zone and the EU28 also paint a picture of a generally good economic situation for the first half of 2017.
CECIMO has just published new ‘Guidelines for CE marking on metal working milling machines’. This is the third publication in a series of guidelines aimed at supporting market surveillance authorities, customs authorities and economic operators to assess the conformity of machines with existing European product safety law. Find out more in the story below.
Smart Factory Expo returns on the 15-16 November but has moved to its new home; the superb Exhibition Centre Liverpool. For details on how to attend please see within the brief.
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.
