Vince Cable visits MACH - talks manufacturing

Organised by the Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) and sponsored by Lloyds TSB Commercial, MACH 2012 is the UK's biggest exhibition dedicated to advanced and precision manufacturing technologies. Dr Cable said: "I'm delighted to have been invited to MACH 2012 and very pleased to have been able to meet so many of the outstanding engineers and companies that are here. Whether exhibiting the latest technology or looking to apply it to dynamic businesses, the people here demonstrate the UK's extraordinary capacity to create, engineer and manufacture world-class products. These technologies feed into the value chains of so many businesses and are vital to creating a thriving, balanced UK economy." Simon Pollard, president of the MTA, said: "MACH is Britain's biggest exhibition of manufacturing technology. It lies at the heart of an incredible range of UK supply chains and the companies at MACH 2012 are a mixture of multinationals supplying the very best global technology to innovative UK companies and SMEs serving niches and specialist markets. "For our sector to continue to go from strength to strength, we must ensure it remains competitive on a global scale and that it can easily export its world-class technologies and applications. But to continue to thrive, we must also ensure we develop the engineering talent of tomorrow and the dynamic SMEs that contribute so much to the UK's manufacturing economy." During his visit, Machinery was able to ask the Business Secretary about rebalancing of the economy, which implies that manufacturing's proportion of GDP must grow. Machinery asked when a reversal to its long-term shrinkage would come. Dr Cable said: "We saw manufacturing growing more rapidly than the economy as whole last year, although the last few months it has been in remission. But I would expect to see that trend [faster relative growth] over the next few years." As to what a sensible rebalanced proportion of the economy manufacturing might be, Dr Cable had this to say: "Setting targets doesn't really make any sense, partly because the boundary between manufacturing and services is a very blurred one these days. A lot of manufacturing is intangibles, IT, it's design, so setting numbers, probably, isn't very helpful. But I would certainly expect, and hope, that the manufacturing sector grows as a share of the economy, although it is totally unrealistic to think about the mid-teens; but we are not setting hard and fast targets." Image: Dr Vince Cable, Business Secretary, with MTA president Simon Pollard, at the MTA roundtable at MACH 2012