Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
First up, the final of our flagship school’s competition, the Technology, Design and Innovation (TDI) Challenge took place this week at the European headquarters of Yamazaki Mazak in Worcester. Once again, the standard of entries was incredibly high, and our judging panel found it hard to pick the winners. Find out all the results in the story below.
The Inter-Association golf day takes place on 17th July at Northamptonshire County Golf Club. This is one of the top 100 courses in the country and for just £75 per-person you can join a fantastic day of golf. Places are now strictly limited so if you would like to attend email Tenjiwe Madzima in the MTA events team for details at tenjiwe.madzima@mta.org.uk.
The MMMA ‘Metalworking Village’ at MACH 2020 will be the largest area yet taken by the MMMA. It has already exceeded expectations for members attending, with 23 companies confirmed so far. See the story below to learn which companies will be at the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies showcase.
CECIMO are hosting the International Conference on Additive Manufacturing (AM) on the morning of 17th September at EMO. If you would like to attend this event and find out all the latest developments with AM, check out the story below.
The MTA Business Survey for June was launched earlier this week; it’s one of our slightly more in-depth quarterly surveys. The on-line form is available at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-jun19 and we would encourage all MTA members to participate as it provides a unique insight into the fortunes of the manufacturing technology sector. It looks as though the summer will be an “interesting” period, so it is important that we have an overview of the market during this period.
MTA members, the University of Wolverhampton, have secured funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to deliver a ‘Composites & Additive Layer Materials Engineering Research & Innovation Centre’ (CALMERIC). CALMERIC will support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) based in the Shropshire and Staffordshire counties to carry out research and innovation projects in the field of advanced engineering materials. Find out how you can get involved within the Brief.
Staying with funding, a share of £1 million is available for partnerships between the UK and Singapore which develop disruptive and game-changing innovations in a variety of fields. The funding is available through Innovate UK and the EUREKA Network. More details on this can be found below.
The latest data supporting the Contract Price Adjustment Service that we subscribe to for MTA Members is available this week - if you would like examples of possible formulae that can be incorporated into contracts for the long-term supply of goods, just ask email Geoff Noon at gnoon@mta.org.uk to find out more.
The HSE are hosting an event on the 24th July 2019 at their Science and Research Laboratories in Buxton looking at Designing out CNC Machine Metalworking Fluid Mist Inhalation Risks. The event aims to bring together CNC equipment designers with local exhaust ventilation (LEV) designers and start discussions and dialogue about how to design out CNC Machine Metalworking Fluid Mist Inhalation Risks.
The manufacturing sector PMI data at the start of the week was almost universally poor. The UK saw a further decline, to 48.0, following the “sugar-rush” of the pre-Brexit stock-building in the 1st quarter - something that was also reflected in the GDP data in the National Accounts that we cover in this week’s article. The PMI data elsewhere was also gloomy - when the star of the European manufacturing sector is Greece, you know things are not going well, but at least the sun must be shining! Most of the major Asian economies were in negative territory, with India the only exception. Going back to the UK, we are seeing signs of a downturn in the investment data that was published alongside the national accounts, with manufacturing a little worse than overall business investment, but the engineering and vehicles industries weaker still.
In Europe, the Economic Sentiment Indicator (this covers the whole economy) published by the European Commission slipped again in June, with industrial confidence having the largest negative influence on the overall trend. June and April jointly had the weakest confidence indicators for 8 years and, significantly, the overall index is below the long-run average for the first time since the Autumn of 2013 in the midst of the Euro crisis. There was mixed data on investment and profitability in the Euro-zone; investment remains at its highest since before the recession, but profitability slipped again in the 1st quarter and is now at its lowest since the end of 2014.
Thanks for reading we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news and views until then have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.
