Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning showed a flat trend across the latest 3 months and despite the most recent peak being in November 2025 (which is now outside the “latest” period), manufacturing output in the UK was +1.2% higher in the latest 3 months than in the previous period and +0.3% up on the same months a year ago.
It is also important to note that this data refers to a period that is before the outbreak of the latest conflict in the Middle East – that started on 28th February, which was a Saturday and will, therefore, have had only a minor impact on the month. Unless there is an improvement in output in March – which is possible as the data is seasonally adjusted – the 3-month rolling trend is likely to decline from now onwards.
At the sub-sector level, output of the capital goods industries – where most purchasers of manufacturing technology equipment can be found – in the latest 3 months (December 2025 to February 2026) was +4.1% higher than in the previous period (September to November 2025) and +2.4% up on a year earlier (December 2024 to February 2025).
The explanation for the better performance of the capital goods sector can be found in the recovery of output in the automotive industry where production in the latest 3 months was +18.8% higher than in the previous period which, of course, contains the months when JLR had stopped production due to the cyber-attack. Although we don’t like to use figures from just one month, according to the ONS, output in February was -4.8% lower than in January; this suggests that the recovery period has ended and once September and October (the weak months) have dropped out of this calculation, we will get a clearer picture of this industry. Another pointer to this is that automotive output in the latest 3 months was -7.5% lower than a year earlier.
Among the other key customer industries for the manufacturing technology sector, metal products is currently leading the way with output in the latest 3 months +4.4% higher than the previous period and +1.2% up on a year earlier. The former figure would not be unexpected as a chunk of this industry will be sub-contractors to the automotive manufacturers, but we did not see a sharp fall for the metal products companies in September and October 2025 when automotive output fell sharply, so something else looks to be going on here.
The machinery (sometimes called mechanical engineering) industry had been doing reasonably well but partly due to revisions in the data series, coupled with a sharp fall in output in January that was not recovered by a rise in February, output in the latest 3 months is down by -1.1%, although it is still +1.2% higher than a year earlier.
Finally, aerospace continues to see a steady improvement in activity, but this is another area where we have to caution about the time period being before the Middle East conflict broke out. Another factor to bear in mind here is that the ONS survey is based on turnover data and this industry has a significant player who charges “power-by-the-hour”; if flying of, especially, wide body aircraft declines, we are likely to see a consequent reduction in “output” in this industry. For now, we note that output in the latest 3 months was +0.6% higher than the previous period and +5.4% up on a year earlier.
You can download the ONS Statistical Bulletin from their web-site at https://www.ons.gov.uk/releasecalendar (16 April) or request it from MTA; we also have an analysis of the key industries which is available to members – please contact Martin Redhead ([email protected]) if you would like these charts.