Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
Future Engineering Ireland (FEI) 2020 will take place on 29-30th January at CItyWest, Dublin and there is still a chance to exhibit at the show. The exhibition will provide a great opportunity for manufacturing technology providers to show off their latest innovations to potential Irish customers closer to their businesses than ever before. So get in touch with us to find out how you can take part.
Staying with international exhibitions we have a fantastic opportunity for UK-based companies or individuals to appear in our exhibition at the UK Pavilion Expo 2020 Dubai. See below for full details.
Another international show coming up is STEELFAB 2020 which takes place in Sharjah, UAE (13-16 January). As the Middle East’s largest exhibition for Metalworking, Metal Manufacturing and the Steel Fabrication Industries, it is a good opportunity to meet new customers and partners, as well as reinvigorating existing relationships. Visitors are from Oil+Gas, Construction+Fabrication, Aerospace, Automotive, Shipbuilding and Medical.
Also, this week, BSI has launched a new PAS on digital readiness, the EURIS grouping sets out its Brexit points, and MTA is talking Rules of Origin with BEIS.
The October edition of the MTA Business Survey is still running, and we would encourage all MTA members to participate. The online form is available at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-oct19 and as we go through the Election campaign, it will be important that we can track the latest situation in the manufacturing technology sector.
The Safety and Health Engineering Partnership (SHEP) is running a one-day welding fume and metalworking fluid seminar on November 26th to help SMEs keep their workforces safe and their companies on the right side of the law.
The main focus of the HSE’s January-March 2020 fabricated metal inspection programme, will be on ensuring companies have effective control measures in place to minimise risks associated with exposure to metalworking fluids and welding fume. The new SHEP website is here: https://shepuk.co.uk/
MTA members Romi UK will be hosting ‘Blue Circle Event’ and technical seminars on the 13th & 14th November 2019, at their Rugby showroom. If you are interested in attending see within the Brief.
The rest of the PMI data for October was published on Monday, so following the UK report last week, we take a look at the rest of the world this week. Europe and, in particular the Euro-zone and Germany, remains weak and few countries have the PMI above 50; even Switzerland, which saw the strongest improvement in the PMI reading compared to September is still (just) in negative territory. The picture is also mixed in Asia, although here, no-one is strongly in either direction, but with a majority negative. The only good news was in the Americas where all 4 countries that we cover were above 50, with Mexico back in positive territory for the first time since May.
The latest data-set for the Contract Price Adjustment Service that MTA subscribes to for members is available. Although not applicable to many companies, if you have any form of long-term supply contract this could be of use to you either directly or as a template for inclusion in contracts. More details are in the article below.