Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
The MTA has been working with our partner trade associations within EURIS to promote the interests of our industry in Brexit negotiations. To maintain our influence, we need some hard data on the trading status and position of our members as well as the points of most concern in Brexit and wider trade. Please can you take a few minutes to complete the survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MTA_Brexit_Survey.
A team from the Design and Prototyping Group at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) were approached by local firm Wilson Benesch to use its additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities to realise a selection of new titanium components. Find out more in the story below.
It is with great sadness we have to announce Dugard company Chairman Bob Dugard passed away peacefully at Royal Sussex County Hospital Brighton on the 5th of August after a long illness which he fought in his typical “never give up” fashion. More details can be found below.
Manufacturing 2075 is a one-day symposium held at Cranfield University and sponsored by the MTA, which will focus on the long term global manufacturing challenges.
The event will start with a set of keynotes from manufacturing thought leaders, social science experts, educationists and technology innovators followed by a series of brainstorming sessions to capture delegate imaginations. You can find out how to attend this event within the Brief.
University of Sheffield have put out a Request for Quotation, the AMRC are looking to purchase a metal additive manufacturing system. Below you can find the details of the specification they are looking for.
There is still just time to get your return for the July edition of the MTA Business Survey back to us if you have not done so already - it will be closing early next week. You can access the on-line form at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-jul18 - we look forward to hearing from you.
Today saw the first set of quarterly data since the ONS re-scheduled the publication of data; this means that we get GDP, manufacturing output, trade and investment data all on the same day so, with the timescales for the Friday Brief, we can only cover the first of these this week. The headline shows an acceleration of growth in the UK economy to +0.4% for the 2nd quarter, double the pace of Q1, but the annualised rate only picks up to +1.3%; however, as we note in the article, rounding has a significant impact on this and the trend, although generally in line with expectations, is not quite as good as the headlines suggest. Another concern for MTA members is that manufacturing output declined in the quarter, although this seems to have been mainly due to the poor numbers in April, with May and June being positive, although not by enough to outweigh the first month in the quarter - more on this next week when we have had a chance to analyse the industry level data. We also take a closer look at the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee Inflation Report that gives more of the background to the increase in interest rates last week.
That’s all for this week have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.
