Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
First up this week we have a take on events in Parliament from the MTA’s Head of External Affairs Paul O’Donnell. Brexit looks ever messier but might we be beginning to see how the process might move forward? As ever with Brexit the word ‘might’ is doing a lot work there and the MTA will continue to argue for an outcome that preserves as close a relationship to the single market as possible and avoids No Deal.
The MTA is pleased to advise that the Department for International Trade (DIT) has confirmed funding for some engineering overseas shows for 2019/2020. All eligible UK companies will receive from £1,500 - £2,500 towards eligible costs under the Tradeshow Access Programme (TAP), depending on the location of the event. Full details of what is available can be found in the Brief below.
The organisers of the Industry 4.0 Summit & Expo 2019 (10-11 April) in Manchester are offering MTA members a 30% discount on the 2-day summit fee. (The Expo is free to attend if you pre-register.)
Practitioners from across the UK’s Additive Manufacturing (AM) sector are invited to share their knowledge and experience in the first in a unique series of events supported by the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing (NCAM). Learn how other AM users are addressing common challenges in application and development. Find out more about this event and how to register below.
The February edition of the MTA Business Survey will be closing on Monday, so there is just time to get your return back to us if you have not done so already (thank you to those who have replied). The on-line form at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-feb19 remains open - we look forward to hearing from you.
The manufacturing output data for January in both the UK and Europe made fairly gloomy reading for MTA members; although both the UK and European data picked up in January itself, the 3-month rolling trends are still showing a fall in output and the capital goods sub-sector, where most of our customers can be found, is among the weakest on both sort and medium term comparisons. In the UK, the individual industries that we track each month are all in negative territory, although the data for the Aerospace industry continues to be somewhat puzzling given the anecdotal evidence from this industry. In contrast, the US market continues to grow strongly through month-on-month variations, with both the machinery and tooling trends running at well into double-digit rates for the rolling 12-month trend. The monthly UK GDP data that came out alongside the output data also shows a better month in January, but the rolling 3 month trend remains subdued, for now at least.
That’s all for this week, we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news and views, until then have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.
