Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
We have another action-packed edition of our newsletter for you and it is difficult to know exactly where to start. But as all roads these days seem to lead to Westminster, it seems a good a place as any to begin. The MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell has been on the ground at party conferences over the last few weeks and reflects on the current political instability engulfing the benches of the Commons.
As promised last week we have a full report from EMO Hannover and how the MTA have been representing our members internationally, along with our work with CECIMO. We also have EMO news from the organisers and attendees of the exhibition.
It was a busy week for CECIMO too at EMO, they held several press conferences, Stewart Lane, Corporate Manager, Renishaw, MTA Board Member is the Chairman of CECIMO Additive Manufacturing Committee, so with have an update on the work being done across Europe in developing AM. MTA President and Non-Executive Director, Yamazaki Mazak, Marcus Burton is the Chairman of the CECIMO Economic committee and hosted a very well attended press conference on global market geopolitical challenges for the European Machine Tool industry. Find out more about both events. below.
Staying with economic forecasts the MTA Forecast Seminar will be taking place on 17th October. This year it is being held at Yamazaki Mazak in Worcester, if you would like to attend please follow the link to the MTA website and sign-up https://www.mta.org.uk/event/forecast-seminar-2019 - we look forward to seeing you there.
MTA members STAR GB are hosting an Open House from 8th - 10th October at their Technology Centre in Derby. Star GB’s open house is set to be an educational event packed with the latest innovations, expert knowledge and networking opportunities. Guests will gain an insight into Star sliding head technology with a special focus on automation and Industry 4.0 solutions.
Further MTA member news comes from Filtermist International, they have just opened a 30,000 sq ft unit just a few minutes walk away from its purpose-built Headquarters on the T54 Business Park in Telford. The Distribution Centre was officially opened by the MTA CEO, James Selka, as part of an Open House designed to showcase the company’s full product range and celebrate 50 years in business. Congratulations to Filtermist on this exciting new development.
Issue 7 of HVM Connect is hot off the press. Every issue includes news on the cutting edge of high value manufacturing from across the network of CATPULTS centres in the UK, you can download a copy in the story below.
A self-confessed teenage tearaway who turned her life around with an engineering apprenticeship has made the finals of the National Apprenticeship Awards. Ambition, aspiration and confidence were not words that featured heavily in 20-year-old AMRC apprentice Rebecca Wright’s vocabulary. But it is those precise qualities which have seen her sail through the rigorous judging process to be crowned a regional winner and national finalist. Find out more from this inspiring story below.
Both the latest results from the CBI survey and the reports of the Bank of England’s Agents point to significant weakness in the manufacturing sector in the UK. While they highlight exports specifically, there is the implication that the domestic market is also in a poor state (which is not surprising given the generally high export ratios in a lot of the individual industries within manufacturing in the UK). There are, or course, some more details of this in the article along with the European Commission’s Economic Sentiment Indicator which points to a similar situation in Europe. Also, as promised last week, we have various presentations and data exchanges from meetings that took place during EMO last week - just let us know what you need from the list in the article below.
That’s all for this week, we hope you have enjoyed this edition of the Friday Brief, we’ll be back next week with more industry news and views, until then have a great weekend, from everyone at the MTA.
