Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
The MTA is looking to establish a closer working relationship with the British Standards Institute (BSI). As part of that, we are looking to offer all MTA members access to a number of standards for free. Please see the below story for more details for details of this great offer.
The EURIS Taskforce, of which the MTA is a member, has this week issued a call for clarity from the Government over the proposed two-year transition period and what it might actually mean for UK industry. EURIS has written to the Secretary of State for the Department for Exiting the European Union to highlight members concerns and ask for answers on a number of specific points.
GF MS New Technologies Laser Morning will be held at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry on Wednesday 7th March between 09:00 – 13:30. Amongst other things the event will cover Laser Texturing: Introduction to GF surface texturing capabilities, for both decorative andfunctional applications.
The second Industrial Cadets Awards will take place on 7th March 2018 at The IET's Savoy Place, in the prestigious Kelvin Lecture Theatre. MTA member Yamazaki Mazak has been nominated. Find out what awards they are up for in the story below.
There was good news in the UK GDP figures that were released this morning with the growth rate for the UK economy slightly ahead of expectations; however, this was tempered slightly by the fact that the overall growth rate for 2017 only came out at +1.8%, its slowest rate since 2012. Although we don’t have the detailed figures yet, manufacturing continued to grow strongly with its 2nd successive increase of +1.3% for the quarter and an annual increase of +2.7% (the best since 2014). The other economic news this week was the CBI Industrial Trends Survey which was equally positive about the manufacturing sector with strong growth in both orders and output and an improvement in investment intentions – the only small caveat is that the latter trend could have been better given the strength of activity and indications of capacity issues holding back the sector.
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.
