Friday Brief (28/03/2024) W13

Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s ‘Thursday Brief’! As tomorrow is Good Friday, we have brought you some great stories this afternoon instead!

BEC have invited the MTA Cluster to organise a delegation of businesspeople with the power to purchase the products and services showcased at the fair. The professional members of the delegation must belong to the Procurement Department, Technical Department or Management of the company. Check out the story below for more details.

BSI have 3 new proposals for us this week. They read: Industrial automation systems and integration — Numerical control systems for machine tools — Part 3: Safety requirements, Ergonomics — Accessible design — Method for creating colour combinations — Part 3: For population with diverse colour vision and Ergonomics — Industrial automation systems and integration — JT file format specification for 3D visualization — Part 3: Version 2. Please take a look at the details below.

UK goods exports to the EU continue to be affected by difficult business conditions including inflation, supply chain disruption and regulatory change following the UK’s departure from the EU.In the Institute Of Export’s upcoming April webinar, ‘Customs solutions for simplified exports to the EU’, the IOE&IT, in partnership with Groupe BBL, will give insight into how you can manage and optimise your customs processes to kick-start or reboot your exports to the EU. More details can be found in the story.

The introduction of mandatory ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting is set to have significant implications for engineering businesses. Keith Davidson, Environment partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell discusses how the upcoming ESG developments, starting in 2024, will fundamentally change the business landscape for engineering companies. Found out more about Irwin Mitchell’s webinar below.

We have a mix of economic news this week with the National Accounts for the 4th quarter of 2023 showing no change to the first estimates for the UK economy and confirming that, uniquely among the G7 nations, we were in a recession in the 2nd half of 2023. However, this is likely to be both short-lived and mild compared to most previous experiences of an economic recession with signs of growth in Q1-24 already appearing. More details in the article below, including notes on the latest investment data for the UK which also includes the first look at the industry level breakdown.

The other news comes from surveys with the results of both the CBI Industrial Trends Survey and the European Commission’s Economic Sentiment Index (ESI) being published. The CBI survey showed a weakening of manufacturing output and orders compared to the previous month. Although the EC survey still has the ESI below its long-run average, there are tentative signs of a general improvement in activity with 11 of the 26 Member States (up from 8 in the February report) above their long-run average level.

That brings us to the end of this weeks Newsletter! We hope you all have a wonderful Easter and we’ll ‘see’ you next Friday!

EUROPEAN COMMISSION ECONOMIC SENTIMENT INDEX – MARCH 2024

The European Commission (EC) draws from a range of surveys to construct confidence indicators for five sectors of the economy and then uses these to calculate up its Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) which is converted to an index based on the long-run average. In the March* report, the ESI for both the EU and the […]

CBI INDUSTRIAL TRENDS SURVEY – MARCH 2024

The latest results of the survey showed that output volumes fell in the 3 months to March* but are expected to increase in the coming period. The fall in output was at a similar pace to that recorded in the February* survey, with a decline being recorded in 11 out of 17 sub-sectors; of these, […]

UK NATIONAL ACCOUNTS – 4th QUARTER 2023

In the release of the National Accounts for the final period oof last year which were published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there were no revisions to the GDP data for the UK economy at the level of 1 decimal place at which these are quoted. This, therefore, confirmed that the UK […]

Irwin Mitchell – The impact of mandatory ESG reporting on engineering businesses

The introduction of mandatory ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting is set to have significant implications for engineering businesses. Keith Davidson, Environment partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell discuss how the upcoming ESG developments, starting in 2024, will fundamentally change the business landscape for engineering companies. Recent and expected ESG developments Although the term ESG […]

Upcoming webinar: solutions to common customs difficulties when exporting to the EU

UK goods exports to the EU continue to be affected by difficult business conditions including inflation, supply chain disruption and regulatory change following the UK’s departure from the EU. According to ONS figures published on 13 March 2024, exports to the EU decreased by 1.3% in the three months to January 2024, while trade with […]

BSI Standards

Please be advised that a New Work Item Proposal has been loaded to the BSI Standards Development Portal for comment. Any comments received will be submitted to the national committee AMT/4 “Industrial data and manufacturing interfaces” for consideration when deciding the UK response to the associated Standards Development Organisation. Please visit: ISO/NP 23218-3 (Ed 2) […]

FUNDED MTA DELEGATION TO VISIT BIEMH

The 32nd edition of BIEMH – International Machine Tool Biennial, co-organised by BILBAO EXHIBITION CENTRE (BEC) along with AFM – Advanced Manufacturing Technologies will take place from 3rd to 7th June 2024 at BEC, Bilbao (Spain). BEC have invited the MTA Cluster to organise a delegation of businesspeople with the power to purchase the products […]

Friday Brief