Friday Brief 29/04/2022

Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s MTA Friday Brief! Can you believe it’s the 1st of May on Sunday? And don’t forget there is another bank holiday on Monday!

We have some great stories for you today and I would like to kick them off with a big welcome to our two new MTA Members. Details on our new members Ayming and Fractoy Ltd can be found in the story below.

Fronius UK will be opening the doors to its Technology Centre to unveil the latest cutting-edge welding technology at its Open House on 18th and 19th May. Check out more about the event and find a link to register in the story below.

Engineers from companies across the West Midlands are being asked to sign up to help develop and deliver a new project for primary schools, funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Education charity, The Smallpeice Trust and Birmingham Museums Trust are working together on the Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious ‘Mini Pioneers’ project to excite children across Birmingham about Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM). Go to the story to find more details.

The government has lifted all tariffs on goods from Ukraine, part of broad UK economic support, including £1bn in loan guarantees. Find the full list of sanctions and links to press releases below.

To help our members the experts of MTA Associate Member, Citation have put together a free guide with their top tips for doing hybrid working right – from your legal obligations and Health & Safety, to inclusion, engagement, contracts and policies. Download the guide in the story.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has a new director of advanced manufacturing, the change coming at a critical time for the sector. Manufacturing faces critical challenges, due to Brexit, a global trend towards re-shoring, and supply chain disruptions which have been made worse by the war in Ukraine. Find more important details below.

The Aerospace Unlocking Potential programme is being delivered by the University of Nottingham in partnership with the Midlands Aerospace Alliance, and is supported by the European Regional Development Fund. If your company is eligible, they will design the best package of support and funding for your goals. Check out all the details in the story.

NPL Manufacturer Measurement Network’s measurement strategy event will discuss the basis for a measurement strategy, method and reason, what to do with measurement data once captured to help enable business decisions based upon data knowledge, discuss some examples of good practice for data and outline some ways in which you can gain knowledge and help with your measurement challenges. Register through the link in the story.

There is an eclectic mix of economic news this week with the main headlines coming from the CBI Industrial Trends Survey which is probably best summarised as good and bad news; the UK manufacturing sector is still growing and investment intentions remain above their long-run average, but everything is a little weaker or lower than it was 3 months ago. The flash PMI data for manufacturing was broadly flat for the UK with various elements of the indicator moving in opposite ways; with other countries having slightly different timings and experiences, there is a range of trends globally in this data with Germany, the Euro-zone and Japan weakening while France and the USA look to have had a stronger month.

The rest of the economic news this week covers the latest profitability data for UK manufacturing companies (weaker), data on UK production of cars and their engines (affected by a shortage of electronics) from SMMT and the market situation in the USA where machine tool demand continues to set new records while the tooling business is continuing its slow recovery.

Finally, just a quick reminder that the MACH Exhibitors Survey is still open for input from those of you who were with us at the NEC three weeks ago – you can access the online form at www.mta.org.uk/MACH2022-exhibitors-survey if you have not already done so.

That is all we have got for this week’s Friday Brief. Thank you for keeping up to date with us and we will ‘see’ you again next week.

Hybrid working- top tips for doing it right

According to a YouGov survey, late in 2021, half of British workers (50%) were still working from home at least some of the time, up from 37% before the pandemic. An even high number (60%), said they would prefer to work remotely always or some of the time if they could choose. So, whether you […]

New actions on Ukraine and Russia

The government has lifted all tariffs on goods from Ukraine, part of broad UK economic support, including £1bn in loan guarantees. Imposed on Russia is a new export ban on products and technology that “could be used to repress the people of Ukraine”. That “could include interception and monitoring equipment”. Import bans have been imposed […]

Be a positive role model to inspire engineers of the future

BSI Standards

Please be advised that a New Work Item Proposal has been loaded to the BSI Standards Development Portal for comment. We hope this will assist in increasing awareness of the Standards Development Portfolio. Any comments received will be submitted to AMT/008 Additive manufacturing, for consideration when deciding the UK response to the associated Standards Development […]

Welcome New MTA Members!

We are very excited to announce two new MTA members who have recently joined! Ayming are Europe’s leading specialist Research and Development tax consultancy with over 30 years of experience. With 1300 employees operating in 14 countries across Europe and the US, they have diverse expertise spanning various industries. By providing strategic advisory services on innovation funding and HR […]

Fronius Open House 18 and 19 May in Milton Keynes

Fronius UK will be opening the doors to its Technology Centre to unveil the latest cutting-edge welding technology at its Open House on 18th and 19th May. The event promises to be informative, hands-on and packed with fun and whether you are looking to review your welding processes, or find out what’s new, this is […]

ECONOMIC NEWS

CBI Industrial Trends Survey, April 2022: The results from the latest CBI Industrial Trends Survey (ITS) concluded that there has been a slowing in the rate of growth of output over the past 3 months but it remains above the long-run average level. Output grew in 12 of the 17 industries in the ITS with […]

MMN Measurement Strategy Event

Measurement Strategy – What to do with measurement data to help inform your business decisions? Post-measurement analysis activities are just as important as the measurement results themselves. A single measurement can provide information about the part, but analysis of multiple, ongoing production parts can provide detailed information about the manufacturing process. Statistical Process Control techniques […]

Aerospace and Aviation: A World of Opportunity

Your products, services and capabilities could create great opportunities in aerospace and adjacent advanced engineering or manufacturing markets. If you are an SME in the Midlands looking to innovate, enhance productivity, diversify or grow in aerospace or beyond, help is on hand. The Aerospace Unlocking Potential programme is being delivered by the University of Nottingham […]

BEIS head of advanced manufacturing

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has a new director of advanced manufacturing, the change coming at a critical time for the sector. Fred Perry was principal private secretary to secretary of state Kwasi Kwarteng, and before that was deputy director for global supply chains at the Department for International Trade. He […]

Friday Brief