Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.

First up, MACH 2018 exhibitors, we want you to make the most out of the show and get as much exposure as possible. Our weekly newsletter to promote the exhibition is back for 2018 and we want to encourage all our exhibitors to make this service work for them. We are taking news stories from www.machexhibition.com to include in the bulletin. So, please start optimising your profiles over on the website and adding your press releases to the exhibitor news section.

The government has declared 2018 as the ‘Year of Engineering’ and, with MACH 2018 just around the corner we would like to gain the support of all our members and exhibitors by championing this project. Please read this story and get in contact with Tom Lane at the MTA to pledge your support, email Tom at tlane@mta.org.uk. The project launches next week, so we have a final reminder for members to support this project and sign the letter we are sending to the PM; please have a read and participate. Submissions close at 5pm today.

The strong data on UK manufacturing output led to this being the BBC’s top news story on Wednesday evening and even trumped the fall in construction activity.  In this week’s article we dig in to the data to find that it is almost universally good news, with the month-on-month dip in Automotive output perhaps the only concern in the detail (this may be related to seasonal adjustment as October was exceptionally strong).  Growth in the output of the Machinery industry made the largest contribution to the overall manufacturing figures and output in the Aerospace and Metal Products industries is also growing.  We are seeing similar strength in Europe where the Capital Goods industries are also leading the way in the growth of industrial production and the European Commission’s Economic Sentiment Indicator is also running hot at the moment, with industrial confidence at a good level.

On the 16th and 17th March 2018 the Canada Research Centre are hosting Business Automation 4.0 conference at the University of Oxford, Said Business School. More details on how to attend this event can be found within the Brief.

Croner provide HR and legal support for MTA Members they have provided a story for this week’s newsletter on Tribunal Claims rise by 120%: Is Your Business Protected?.  More details on the services Croner provide can be found in the Services section of the MTA website under HR and Legal.

If you have long-term contracts in which prices adjust over time, then finding a robust mutually agreed way of settling those adjustments can be a problem. The MTA subscribes to a service which gives a monthly track of key indices on labour and materials costs. This gives members a way of updating the relevant prices independently. You can find out more about this service, which has a long track record of successful use by members below.

Thanks for reading we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news, until then have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.