Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
As mentioned last week the MTA and its members were over in Ireland at the National Manufacturing and Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition in Dublin. The Exhibition was very successful and the inclusion of manufacturing technology very much welcomed by the market. The MTA hosted a pavilion at the event and you can find full details about the exhibition and our plans for future Irish engagement in the story below.
Many members will be familiar with The link to the guidance site is in the story below.
As the politics of Brexit continue to frustrate, there’s a little more on that in a story below, the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a Deal remains very live. There’s a lot of guidance being published, not all of it particularly useful and none of it completely comprehensive. We’ve collected some of it in the item below which includes the Government’s official guidance on trading with Europe in No Deal and a brief guide compiled by the Federation of Small Business. There’s also information on the EU’s REACH regulatory regime for chemicals. In the event of a No Deal Brexit this regime, and the registrations you will need to make, will change overnight. The HSE is the UK agency which will take it over and they have produced a guide aimed at helping companies to prepare for No Deal which you can access below. A gentle reminder too that MTA members have an opportunity to learn more about Customs procedures through our friends at the Institute for Export LINK BACK TO PREVIOUS STORY HERE.
MTA members may be interested in: Analysis for Innovators (A4I) , a collaborative scheme which “targets competitiveness and productivity head on, it offers cutting edge R&D, expertise and facilities to UK companies that want to solve an analysis or measurement problem from within their existing business”. Innovate UK will fund both NPL and the companies for the majority of the costs depending upon their size, find out more on this inside the Brief.
EMO will return to Hannover later this year and as the largest manufacturing technology exhibitions in the world. We have an update from the show organisers on what you can expect to see at the exhibition.
One industrial trend that has been much discussed over the last few years is the future of the internal combustion engine and diesel as a fuel. Below we carry a paper defending both technologies.
Following on from the very successful Gold Award Dinner dance event, held in May of 2018 the MMMA and ISME are getting together again in 2019 for the Metal Bashers Ball’ to be held on Friday 17th May 2019. If you’re interested in attending please see the story below.
The main headlines from the CBI Industrial Trends Survey that was out this week told a story of manufacturing output continuing to expand at a modest rate, but orders were flat and employment fell for only the 2nd time since the post-recession recovery. The fingerprints of uncertainty generated by Brexit were all over this set of data with points such as the increased reporting of political/economic conditions abroad restricting export orders. However, the most concerning data is for investment intentions which, overall, remained at the negative level that we saw in the October 2018 survey and at the industry level collapsed to their worst ever level for the Machinery industry and were at a recession type level for Metal Products; there was some better news with only a neutral negative balance being recorded for Transport Equipment compared to the large negative 3 months ago. In contrast, the profitability data from the ONS, which we also report this week, showed a near record high level, although this was only for the 3rd quarter of 2018, before the Brexit uncertainty really started to bite.
That’s all for this week, we’ll be back next Friday.
