Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
We want to start this week’s newsletter with some great news, we’re delighted to announce that Future Engineering Ireland (FEI) will once again be part of the National Supply Chain and Manufacturing Conference & Exhibition in Dublin in January 2020. The event was a real success for our members last year and has now expanded from a one-day event to two. The 2020 edition of FEI will take place on 29-30th January at CItyWest, Dublin. So, get in touch with your MTA sales Rep today to secure your stand.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken the opportunity to conduct a reshuffle which has been considerably more wide ranging than expected. The announcements seem to be very much in line with his Government’s stated aim of leaving the EU on the 31st of October come what may. The MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell gives his take on some of the moves below.
UK manufacturers wanting to adopt the latest digital technologies will be able to bid for a new £30 million R&D competition open this week (Monday 22 July) through the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy. The R&D competition is part of the Manufacturing Made Smarter challenge to support the transformation of UK manufacturing by encouraging the development and integration of industrial digital technologies. See the story below to find out how you can get involved.
We have an update from Associate Member of the MTA the University of Wolverhampton who have recently taken part in the worldwide Formula Student Competition at Silverstone. They also have the results from the AR Morgan Challenge at Donington Park, which took place last weekend and info on the next round of the F3 Cup, check out the story below for full details.
MTA members Renishaw have awarded £10,000 of prize money to six local schools who won its Super Science competition, held in collaboration with the Bristol Post and BristolLive. The winners are using their prize money to purchase resources and fund activities to support the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) curriculum.
We also have an update from EMO which takes place in September, the exhibition will offer young entrepreneurs access to market as many are attracting the attention of established engineering firms. See the story below.
The CBI Industrial Trends Survey is now showing a decline in activity in the manufacturing sector alongside various other surveys and data; while some of this is because of the issues in the Automotive industry around the original Brexit date, this is certainly not the whole story, with only 5 of the 17 sub-sectors showing manufacturing output growing in the 2nd quarter of 2019 - there is some encouragement in that Mechanical Engineering was one of those 5 areas. The CBI survey also notes that investment intentions remain negative with uncertainty the factor most likely to limit capital expenditure; although still relatively minor, there was also an increase in reports of cost of finance and problems with raising external finance in this survey. In other data released this week, there is a marked downturn in the profitability of UK manufacturing companies and in the USA, machinery orders are falling while sales of cutting tools looks to be levelling off at a high market level.
That’s all for this week, we hope you have a great weekend and enjoy the sunshine while it last, we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news and views.
