Friday Brief Intro 21/04/2023

Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief! It’s been such a busy April so far, this month really has flown by!

First up this week we’d like to give you access to a short questionnaire which is part of a larger project aiming to develop safe working practices for workplaces using desktop 3D printers. Please go to the story below to find a link to the survey.

We are delighted to announce that Robotics and Automation: A New Perspective is returning to the MTC on 10th & 11th May 2023. This free event is aimed at anyone interested in discovering new manufacturing technologies and exploring the future of robotics and automation in UK industry. Have a look at the details of the event in the story below.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is inviting a large audience to attend a Linkedin session on Monday April 24th and to ask questions through the normal Linkedin comment box. The initiative, which is being taken through the new Department for Business and Trade, is part of a new political engagement by with business ahead of the next general election. Check out the links below.

EAMA is calling on the government to make a small but important change to boost STEM education in schools (also colleges, academies etc). Ofsted currently gives no credit for extra-curricular STEM activities in its assessments of schools, which means they have little incentive to promote STEM. Please take a few moments to answer the three short questions in the story. Your feedback will be of huge help, in confirming that we are right to be making the argument and in providing the evidence that is so important in getting government to change policy.

Our main economic story this week is the report from our Spring Update presentation which was held this week at the MTC in Coventry. The focus of both presentations was the twin streams of an update of our forecasts from last November and a concentration on the UK economy and market expectations, although we can never ignore the rest of the world of course.

The macro-economic background was presented by Andy Goodwin, Chief UK Economist at Oxford Economics and the overall theme was one of 2023 not being as poor as had been anticipated but a weaker outlook now for 2024. The industry presentation was given by Geoff Noon, MTA’s Statistician and looked at the background and assumptions behind the forecasts, as well as the key risks and their likely impact. This latter point should help users of the forecasts to track progress against these forecasts as we go through the year.

Take a look at the story below, which includes the link needed for members to access both the updated forecast documents and the presentations from our update event this week.

In our economic news article we cover the flash PMIs for the manufacturing sector which are released today (so we don’t yet have the US figures). The theme here for both the UK and the Euro-zone is a further slip in the overall reading which is generated by weaker output and orders as well s the perverse effect of a shortening in suppliers’ deliver times. This item also takes a look at the latest market trends in the USA and the revised GDP data for Q4-2022 from Eurostat.

Finally, a reminder of the surveys which are running at the moment. The MTA Business Survey which you can find at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-mar23 will be closing early next week while we have a little longer to run in the data collection phase of the EIA Quarterly Survey at https://www.mta.org.uk/EIA-survey%20Q1-23. The MTA biennial Service Engineers Charges survey is also still open and there are more details, including the form for this project at https://www.mta.org.uk/resources/mta-service-engineers-charges-survey. Finally, for those companies in the Additive Manufacturing field, the bi-annual European AM Survey is also running and you can find the form for this at https://www.mta.org.uk/AM-trend-survey-Spring23.

That concludes the Friday Brief for this week! We hope you have a great weekend and look forward to ‘seeing’ you again next Friday for some more great stories!

ECONOMIC NEWS

Flash Manufacturing PMI, April 2023: The flash Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the UK released this morning showed another fall in the reading for the manufacturing sector and, at 46.6, this is the weakest reading since last December. This is in marked contrast to the flash services figure which reached a 12-month high. As with […]

MTA Spring Economic Update 2023

At the MTA Economic Update event this week, we released the Spring update to our forecasts for the UK market for machine tools and cutting tools, as well as the new edition of the Global Machine Tool Forecast. All of these documents and the presentations (we will update these next week with notes) from the […]

Skills: STEM in schools

Working with schools EAMA is calling on the government to make a small but important change to boost STEM education in schools (also colleges, academies etc). Ofsted currently gives no credit for extra-curricular STEM activities in its assessments of schools, which means they have little incentive to promote STEM. We are urging a change in […]

PM asks for questions on Linkedin next Monday

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is inviting a large audience to attend a Linkedin session on Monday April 24th and to ask questions through the normal Linkedin comment box. There are already hundreds of questions from both the UK and abroad, which will doubtless be scanned for ideas. Links: Message from Rishi Sunak – Ask Me […]

Join Robotics & Automation Live Panel Discussion

We are delighted to announce that Robotics and Automation: A New Perspective is returning to the MTC on 10th & 11th May 2023. This free event is aimed at anyone interested in discovering new manufacturing technologies and exploring the future of robotics and automation in UK industry. Robotics and Automation: A New Perspective is proudly […]

Health and Safety Executive – Desktop 3D printing questionnaire

MTC have been contacted by the Health and Safety Executive asking for your help in completing a short questionnaire which is part of a larger project aiming to develop safe working practices for workplaces using desktop 3D printers. By completing this questionnaire, you will be helping the HSE to understand how desktop 3D printers are […]

Friday Brief