Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows a +0.5% rise in manufacturing output in June (compared to May), with the 2nd quarter seeing growth of +0.2% to a level that is +1.0% higher than a year ago. Manufacturing output is slowly edging towards its pre-pandemic level – for the quarterly series this is taken to be Q4-2019 – but, at 98.3%, it is not quite there yet.
Because monthly data can be noisy, although in this case the impact of US tariff announcements means that the variations are likely to be genuine, we will focus on the quarterly trends in the rest of this note. Only 5 of the 13 sub-sectors of manufacturing saw output increase on a quarter-on-quarter basis, with the largest growth being for pharmaceuticals (+7.0%) and machinery (+3.0%).
Drilling into the detail, the first level we can look at is for capital goods (sometimes called investment goods). Although output saw a quarter-on-quarter decline of -0.1%, the latest level was +1.4% higher than a year ago.
The next step is to look at individual industries and here we focus on our 4 key customer groups of metal products, machinery, automotive and aerospace. In the latest data, these neatly split into two groups, with aerospace and machinery growing and metal products and automotive falling.
Aerospace output on the 2nd quarter of 2025 was +3.8% higher than in the previous quarter and +4.0% above the level of a year ago; for machinery (sometimes called mechanical engineering), the growth rates were +2.9% and +6.4% respectively. On the other hand, output of the metal products group declined by -2.0% compared to Q1-2025 and by -3.8% over a year ago, while the automotive industry was down by -4.1% and -5.8% respectively.
For the automotive industry, these trends match the direction of data on the unit numbers of vehicles and engines produced that are compiled by SMMT. However, production of cars fell by -7.3% between Q1 and Q2 of this year, with van production falling by -45% (albeit a much smaller actual number) as a result of the closure of the Stellantis plant in Luton. Despite this, production of internal combustion engines in the UK increased over this period, with growth of +2%, thanks mainly to an increase in June which had the highest monthly total since last September.
You can download the ONS Statistical Bulletin from their website at https://www.ons.gov.uk/releasecalendar (14 August) or request it from MTA; we also have an analysis of the key industries which is available to members – please contact Geoff Noon ([email protected]) if you would like these charts.