January 2021

COMMENT n 2021: A YEAR OF OPTIMISM AND TRUST? As another year dawns, we can only hope that it is going to be memorable for different reasons to 2020. The arrival of the first Coronavirus vaccines has allowed us to dare hope that we might be able to return to some form of normality – even though it might be a rather different normality from the one we took for granted pre- Covid. Certainly it seems that British manufacturers are an optimistic lot, judging from a poll carried out by the business advisory firm BDO last November. It quizzed 111“mid-market”UK manufacturers and found that vast majority (95%) expect their businesses to recover fully from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic within a year of the vaccine becoming available. The remaining 5% expect recovery to take 1-3 years. Almost half (47%) of the companies surveyed said that arrival of the vaccine would prompt them to change their business plans, although they hadn’t made any significant changes yet. And more than half (53%) also reported feeling more optimistic about the UK’s economic recovery than they had been three months earlier. This new-found optimism also seems to be encouraging the manufacturers to invest, with 39% saying they were planning efficiency investments within six months. But many were are also conscious of the challenges that lie ahead. Almost a fifth (19%) regarded paying back business loans as the biggest threat facing them, followed by fears of further lockdowns (17%) and market contraction (15%). One thing that the virus seems to have achieved is to raise the profile and status of scientists and engineers. The way that the engineering and manufacturing communities worked together to produce ventilators so speedily in the early days of the pandemic may have left its mark on the public. A new survey by Ipsos Mori reveals that 89% of the UK population trust engineers to tell the truth, putting them just behind nurses (on 93%) and doctors (91%). Trust in engineers is especially high among Britain’s graduates (95%) and Generation X (94%). The poll of almost 1,000 people placed engineers ahead of teachers (85%), judges (84%), the police (71%), lawyers (61%) and the clergy (56%), on the trustworthiness scale. Languishing at the bottom of the scale are advertising executives, who a mere 13% of those surveyed felt they could trust to tell the truth. This will be of some comfort to politicians who find themselves slightly higher in the public’s estimation (on 15%), but below estate agents (27%) and professional footballers (30%). Hopefully, the high esteem in which engineers are held, especially among younger people, could help to attract new blood into the profession and start to plug the skills gap. But don’t take my word for it. I am a journalist and just 23% of the British public trust what we say. Tony Sacks, Editor lly wns & P IMPROVE PO PROCESSING ACKAGING EFFICIENCY High pressure washdo SKF Food Line hygienica d i d b i it ST es gne ear ng un wnti Reduce Do SKF Food Line stain steel deep groove ba bearing with solid oil me co uk less ll High shock loads SKF stainless steel Food Line bearing units 0800 8766 441 enquiries@acorn ind ® - . www.acorn-ind.co.uk .