The latest release of the 'Industrial Trends Survey' by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) gives an insight into how the UK manufacturing sector is holding up in light of internal and external factors by analysing the data supplied by 379 UK manufacturers.

It is often the “tool room” that gets over looked within a machine shop. It’s that little area where the magic happens, and everything gets fixed or fettled, but often it’s run by amazing engineers who can just work around any issues the machines have and so it’s where the oldest machines tend to reside.

Finally, after almost 5 years of job losses and heartbreak in the oil and gas sector, things finally seem to be on the way up again. New studies show that, despite over 400,000 job losses in recent years, a dramatic rise in growth opportunities is expected by most of the oil and gas companies operating in the UK and offshore.

A few months ago, we had one of those e-mails. The ones we often tend to bypass to get to the e-mails from customers or contacts but this one peaked my interest.

The Governments Industrial Strategy has been discussed and debated over recent months and as several have said, there are many great ideas but fewer specific commitments as to how and when these will be achieved.  

Recruitment has changed so much over the years, mainly due to the massive skills gap our industry is facing but also the meteoric rise of recruitment agencies serving the sector.

Last month our director Andrea delivered a keynote speech to the National Manufacturing Debate hosted at Cranfield University. The event bought together professionals from several fields to discuss challenges facing the industry, in particular whether the government’s Industry Strategy goes far enough to support growth in UK manufacturing.

The manufacturing sector in the UK isn’t known for its abundance of female employees. Look around a typical manufacturing business and the vast majority of workers from the ground floor to the boardroom are likely to be men. This is especially the case among company directors. Among the largest FTSE100 manufacturers, according to The Manufacturer magazine, only 23% of senior managers are women, while the number of women as a proportion of employees in the manufacturing sector overall – including small businesses – is even lower, at a paltry 15%.

An article in the Telegraph from March (2018) reported that the rate of growth in the manufacturing sector had slowed to its lowest rate since late 2016. This apparently counteracts reports published in late 2017 and early 2018, predicting continued unprecedented growth for the manufacturing sector throughout the year.

We are not always uncritical supporters of government policy, but the decision to make 2018 a ‘Year of Engineering’ has, in our opinion, been a positive one so far. Officially endorsed ‘Years of So-and-So’ all too often fall short of their promise. Many are simply vanity projects sponsored by lobby groups or government departments and have very little impact on the sector as a whole.