Friday Brief

Hello from everyone at the MTA;  it has been another busy week for the Team and there is lots of news to bring you.

Before we get into this week’s articles, an advance warning that we will be sending an MTA Members News e-mail early next week (hopefully on Monday) with the outputs from the EAMA Webinar on the transition from the CE mark to the new UKCA mark - please look out for this as it will contain important information for any MTA members whose products require CE marking and there are important changes especially for UK importers.  While on the subject of Brexit, we have news this week on the recent update to the Border Operating Model, including details of a webinar on this topic that MTA members can access, and important information on how to deal with transfers of personal data with the EU post-transition.

Here at MTA we are putting the finishing touches to our new industry specific forecasts which we will be launching at our on-line seminar on Tuesday 20^th October - please click on the story below for more details and a link for registration.

The economic news this week is led by the manufacturing output data that came out this morning.  On most measures, the pace of growth slowed in August and activity remains below both the levels seen at the same time last year and in the comparison between August and the pre-pandemic month of February.  Our article below explores this at a sector and industry level as well as taking a look at the GDP data for the whole economy.  We also have a quick update on the PMI figures with the final data released on Monday and we take a look at the investment and profitability data for the Euro-zone.

We are delighted to welcome a new Associate Member to MTA in the form of Keltie LLP and you can find out more about them, including a discount on their IP services, in the article below.  We also have news from other MTA members in the form of a webinar from GOM UK on the topic of metrology solutions for casting & foundry, webinars from the AMRC on cross-sector supply chain collaboration and on sustainable manufacturing and news from NPL on how MTA members can access their new Measurement for Recovery (M4R) programme.

The MTA Business Survey for September is still open and you can submit your data via the web-site at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-sep20.  The new bi-annual survey for the additive manufacturing community is also still active and the form for this is at www.mta.org.uk/additive-manufacturing-trend-survey.

Details of registration for EMO 2021, which will be held in Milan from 4^th to 9^th October 2021, are now available, including how to claim the “early-bird” rate which is open until 1^st December 2020.

We have a piece by Jack Semple, Secretary of EAMA, looking at the speech given by Boris Johnson to the virtual Conservative Party Conference earlier this week, focusing mainly on the green agenda elements of what he had to say.

Finally this week, there is a good news story as we report on the results of the London Play charity’s Together-A-Kart 2020 competition which was held across three venues in August.  MTA was one of the sponsors of this event which brought go-kart building and racing direct to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in these challenging times.

With a final reminder to look out for the special bulletin early next week with more information about the transition between the CE mark and the UKCA mark, we will sign off by sending best wishes from all at the MTA team for a good weekend.