Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
This week saw the MTA AGM take place on Tuesday 3rd December at Cutlers’ Hall Sheffield.
The event was attended by a number of MTA members and this year featured three presentations on the theme of business improvements. Big thank you to everyone who attended, find out more about the event in the story below.
Although the trends remain mixed, the manufacturing sector PMI readings for November were generally up from October, although the majority of the countries/regions that we track are still below the 50 level that marks the boundary between contraction and expansion of the sector. The UK bucked this trend with the impetus of pre-Brexit stock-building in October dropping out this month and although Germany saw a significant improvement the PMI reading, it remains one of the weakest in our coverage. Only 8 of the 25 countries that we track had a PMI reading above 50, so the overall situation remains weak.
The November edition of the MTA Business Survey has been underway since the start of the week, but we would like to take this opportunity just to remind you to let us have your input. The online form is available at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-nov19.
In a time of industrial and trade uncertainty, the MT sector continues to perform well, as production stands at more than 28 billion in 2018. In the meantime, CECIMO has following closely the review process of the Machinery Directive, the most important legislation for the machinery sector. Find out more within the Brief.
Engineering firms are to be asked about their skills training, in a ground-up research project supported by the MTA. The focus will be on small and medium-sized companies that are taking positive steps to train, outside the formal, government-funded apprenticeship system. The aim is to help to raise standards in the machinery and component supply chain sector, and to get the evidence needed to win relevant government support.
This week saw publication of some revised data for UK production by product and industry and we take a look at this in the economic news article this week. We are still crunching the numbers at the product detail level, but among the highlights to note are the fact that contract machining by metal cutting in the UK was worth £5 billion in 2018, with the equivalent forming activity worth another £2 billion. There is also news of the latest data release on European GDP which continues to show only modest growth - in particular, the Euro-zone is held back by the fact that Germany and Italy have the slowest annualised growth rates in the 3rd quarter. Finally, we announce the availability of two reports which are available for MTA members - CECIMO has published the Q2-19 edition of its Economic & Statistical Toolbox and the December dataset for the Contract Price Adjustment Service that we subscribe to for members is available.
In a time of industrial and trade uncertainty, the MT sector continues to perform well, as production stands at more than 28 billion in 2018. In the meantime, CECIMO has following closely the review process of the Machinery Directive, the most important legislation for the machinery sector.
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.
