MACH 2016 According to the latest Business Monitor report from the Engineering and Machinery Alliance, UK mechanical engineering’s “reasonable start to 2016” was maintained in March.

EAMA chairman Martin Walder said that “orders from UK businesses strengthened in March”, while the 47% of firms registering export gains is the highest percentage since February 2011. Mr Walder hopes that the March export figures will turn out not to be “a one-month anomaly” but instead “the harbinger of a real change in export performance, which the Monitor has shown to be problematic for half of the last 18 or so months covered.”

The EAMA chairman added: “With the euro below the 1.30 mark compared to sterling, the exchange rate is approaching
neutral territory. This enables UK firms to quote competitively for business in the EU single market, which contains five of the mechanical engineering sector’s top-10 markets world-wide — Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Ireland.”

Mr Walder said that “investment activity has picked up significantly, and companies are still actively investing in skills, as filling job vacancies is still an issue for many companies”.

Although confidence remains suppressed, “there was a small up-tick in the balance between firms saying confidence is up and those saying it is down. The overall balance is now out of the negative zone seen in the third and fourth quarters last year.”

He concluded: “Several important trade shows took place in April at the NEC. These included the UK’s biggest manufacturing machinery show — MACH. We expect the positive effect of these shows on companies’ confidence about their future prospects to show up in future months.”