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.

We’re thrilled to announce our recent investment in a new Pinacho STH 400 105x2000mm heavy duty lathe which is due to arrive next week! The Pinacho STH series are market leading flatbed CNC lathes, providing a wide breadth of versatility and precision not offered by other models.

Over the past few months we have been working hard on getting our new website ready to launch. The current website has served us well but is showing its age. The last significant update took place in 2016 and didn’t go far enough to address its structural problems – the site was a good few years old even then.

For the new website we have updated both the design and content.

The biggest challenge facing most UK manufacturing companies is recruiting skilled staff. It seems be at the forefront of most agendas in meetings, conferences and editorials.