Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
With just three weeks to go before the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies showcase kicks off, the MACH 2018 team have announced their full plans for the Education and Development Zone. To find out about all the exciting activities that will be taking place at MACH please see the story below for details.
The METALTECH exhibition, which is in its 24th year, is expected to attract over 2,000 participating companies and more than 21,00 trade buyers and partners from over 40 countries. The MTA and EIA have secured DIT grant funding which will allow UK companies to exhibit for less than £500 a day on the UK pavilion at METALTECH 2018.
The European Commission through DG CONNECT is engaged into a process of revising its strategy on electronics. It has been consulting with various stakeholders through the organisation of a series of workshops to explore the needs of the electronic value chains in Europe. Please see the story below and complete a short survey to help them with this work.
EURIS, of which MTA are members welcomed David Davis’ commitment to securing a deal but reiterates importance of post Brexit Industry-Government liaison body. Find out more within the Brief.
IMTS would like to invite MTA members to a press conference on Tuesday 10th April, during MACH 2018. The press conference will feature a presentation on the U.S. Economy and What’s New at IMTS 2018 – The International Manufacturing Technology Show. See the story below for details on how to RSVP and attend.
The data released by the ONS this morning showed another strong performance for the UK manufacturing sector and, in particular, for most of the key customer industries for MTA members. The exception is the Automotive industry where although output picked up in January, it has fallen on the 3-month rolling trend that we prefer, because of a weak end to 2017; this seems to be in the vehicle part of the industry as SMMT reported a new record level of engine output for the month of January. Total industrial production was also up as the Forties oil-field came back on stream, but the headlines were grabbed by another fall in construction activity. The latest report from the EEF largely confirms the trends we are seeing in the data and other surveys at the moment. Our other report this week covers the latest GDP data for Europe and highlights how growth is accelerating across much of the continent, while UK growth slows.
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.
