Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
Firstly, we’d just like to remind everyone that the MTA's Annual Forecasting Seminar will be held on 18th October 2018 at ISCAR Tools Ltd in Birmingham.
The seminar sees the presentation of the MTA’s Annual Forecasts for the machine and cutting tool markets. Prepared by Oxford Economics the forecasts are an invaluable data set, not obtainable anywhere else. The event is also a chance to hear at first hand from leading economists with their take on the economic issues that cause uncertainty in business and ask to them your questions. While the documents and presentations will be available for MTA members, there is no substitute for hearing the presentations and having the opportunity to discuss the implications with the presenters. You can register for the event, there are a few spaces left, here - https://www.mta.org.uk/event/forecast-seminar-2018.
There is limited space still available for Future Engineering Ireland will take place on 17th January 2019 as part of the National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition, at Citywest in Dublin. To find out how you can get involved please see the story below or email FEI@mta.org.uk for more information.
The MTA has secured Professor Anand Menon, who leads the Centre for the UK in a Changing Europe at Kings College London, and is one of Britain’s leading authorities on Brexit, to speak at our Annual Lunch after the AGM on the 4th December.
On Monday 22nd October the MTA will be hosting the Department for International Trade’s BiSEA (Britain in South East Asia ) and UKABC (UK ASEAN Business Council) UK Roadshow at our offices at 62 Bayswater Road, London. South East Asia is a region where economic growth is strong at the moment and if you would like to find out more about this exciting market please see the story below.
The MTA launched a major new service earlier this year, giving members read-only access to the MTA’s standards list at BSI - which contains up to 200 standards relevant to our industry. Its been a real success with many members taking advantage of it as a cost effective way to access standards. If you would like to find out more about this service, and what it could do for you business, please contact the MTA’s Technology Manager Joshua Dugdale at Joshua.dugdale@mta.org.uk.
A free workshop, led by MTA members, 4CM Ltd, will explain why too many businesses fail to align their sales and marketing efforts to match customer behaviour. It will also provide fresh guidance that MTA members can apply to improve the impact of their business development activities. You can find more information on how to attend this event within the Brief.
Every year BSI and its partners offer young engineers the chance to take part in the IEC Young Professionals Programme, all-expenses paid. The Programme brings together the world's upcoming expert engineers, technicians and managers and provides them with opportunities to shape the future of international standardization and conformity assessment in the field of electrotechnology. If this sounds like something you, or someone at your company, would be interested in please see within the Brief for more details on how to get involved.
Our Business Survey for September will be closing early next week, but there is still time to get your return back to us; https://www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-sep18.
The headline news this week was the UK manufacturing output numbers for August; taking the rolling 3-month trend, this showed an improvement both on the previous 3 months and against a year ago, although at the overall level the growth was concentrated in June. Some of the industry level figures have been affected by the ONS revising the data (this goes back to the start of 2017) and not all of it corresponds with the anecdotal evidence; this mainly applies to Aerospace which now appears to be on a gentle but steady downward trend from a peak in May 2017, although it is important to note that the overall level remains high by historical standards. Alongside this, the ONS’s latest monthly estimate of GDP for the UK economy show growth of +0.7% for the latest 3-month period, equivalent to an annualised rate of +1.5%; if this is confirmed next month when we get the figures for the full quarter, it will represent a small improvement over the rate for the 2nd period of the year.
In other economic news this week, the latest data from the USA shows an unexpectedly strong month in August ahead of IMTS with the market for both manufacturing technology and cutting tools accelerating when a pause for breath might have been anticipated. Investment and profitability in the Euro-zone seems to have levelled off with both measures at a good post-recession level, although still below the 2007 or 2008 highs. Finally this week, we note the availability of a data exchange from IMTS and CELIMO’s latest State of Trade summary.
Finally, this week we have the latest data set for the Contract Price Adjustment Service (CPA) from BEAMA that we subscribe to on behalf of MTA members.
That’s all for this week, thank you for reading and we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news and views, until then have a great week from everyone at the MTA.
