Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
The MTA AGM, Lunch and House of Commons Reception will take place on the 4th December. We are delighted to have confirmed two excellent speakers for the day. Professor Sam Turner, Chief Technology Officer at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult will talk about the latest developments aimed at helping SMEs adopt digital technology. We will also be joined by Professor Anand Menon, who leads the Centre for the UK in a Changing Europe at King’s College London and is one of Britain’s leading authorities on Brexit.
You can find out more about the two speakers and how you can book to your place at the event in the story below.
This week saw the Government announce the new Budget. We were pleased that the Chancellor adopted one of our key recommendations – to increase the Annual Investment Allowance to £1m - and the MTA’s Head of External Affairs takes a closer look at the key issues that affect our sector below.
We’re also pleased to have launched our new podcast this week. The first episode focuses on our recent forecast seminar and the outlook for the UK economy. Have a listen and let us know what you think.
There’s just one month to go to register for Europe’s largest manufacturing technologies exhibition. Taking place from 16th- 21st September 2019, Exhibitors travel to EMO Hannover from all over the world and from all sectors of metalworking technology. For further details on how to register see the story below.
UK Export Finance (UKEF) and the Engineering and Machinery Alliance are hosting a join webinar on Wednesday 21st November at 2pm. The webinar will guide you through the process of accessing finance support from UKEF. For more details and to register email events@ukexportfinance.gov.uk.
Rhodes Interform, a specialist in bespoke composite and metal forming machinery, has recently completed the installation and testing of a world class composite forming facility at the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). The work was recognised on Wednesday when Senior Design Engineer at Rhodes, Ben Jennings, won the prestigious Employee of the Year Award at Composites UK’s Annual Dinner, held at the National Motorcycle Museum. Well done Ben!
This week’s key international economic stats were the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) results for global manufacturing; in general, the trend was for lower readings, but remaining above 50, although as always with coverage of 25 countries, there were exceptions. The UK was on the trend with the fall in its PMI to 51.1 blamed mainly on a fall in orders which was concentrated in the consumer goods sector although investment goods only managed a small improvement. The Euro-zone and its constituent countries also shared in the general trend, although in Italy, the fall in the PMI took it below the 50 level that marks the boundary between expansion (above 50) and contraction (below 50) of the manufacturing sector. We also report Eurostat’s initial estimate for GDP in the 3rd quarter which shows slower growth, both quarter-on-quarter and in the annualised rate; this is consistent with the results from the latest Economic Sentiment Index from the European Commission which showed a fall in confidence and, in most cases, a reduction in capacity utilisation rates for manufacturing.
Finally, the latest data-set from the BEAMA Contract Price Adjustment Service is available for members - see below for more details.
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.
