News August/September 2024 www.pwemag.co.uk Plant & Works Engineering | 07 Visitor registration is now open for Advanced Engineering, the UK’s annual gathering of engineering and manufacturing professionals. Now in its 15th year and being hosted on October 30 and 31, 2024, Advanced Engineering UK is keeping the same format that reaped success from last year’s exhibition, having received high praise from exhibitors and visitors in regards to the cross-industry floor layout. Anyone interested in attending this year can register for a free ticket on the Advanced Engineering website (https://www.advancedengineeringuk.com). This year’s show will expand on the success of two forums introduced last year — the Main Stage and the Advanced Materials & Technologies (AMT) forum. The Main Stage will feature keynotes and key industry players, while the AMT forum will delve deeper into end user case studies across all sectors. Such expansions have been made to compliment the success of the annual show’s rebrand in 2023, having presented a fresh look for visitors. The event featured a new cross-industry floor layout, which was previously divided into several zones, allowing a broader range of exhibitors from a variety of industries that included newly added sectors like marine, motorsport, construction, medical, rail and sport. Over 8800 visitors were able to explore both events, which included 400 exhibitors from AE and 202 from its co-located show, Lab Innovations, all with a single badge. Among the visitors were representatives from well-known companies like Airbus, Rolls-Royce, IBM, Boeing, McLaren, BAE Systems, Catapult HVM, the Department for International Trade and Jaguar Land Rover. “The overwhelmingly positive feedback from 2023 confirmed that the changes made worked, with exhibitors and visitors having found that the new approach created a more collaborative atmosphere for better interaction and networking,” explained Alison Willis, director at Easyfairs, the organiser of Advanced Engineering. “This year, the forums will offer industry insights on the following trending topics; sustainability, innovation, government and policy, automation, AI and skills and levelling-up, all of which have been curated by our outstanding advisory board and industry partners. We’re also planning to broaden our scope by providing high-quality content from an even greater variety of industries.” “I think the fact that there are so many visitors that I would describe as high value engineering and manufacturing businesses in one place is quite unique in the trade show world in the UK, added Andrew Kinniburgh, director at Make UK Defence. “From a Make UK – Defence perspective, it’s really useful to have all of those companies in one place.” Advanced Engineering set to open its doors again in October Verity Davidge, Director of Policy at Make UK, said: “There is no getting away from the fact it’s deeply disappointing to see the UK drop out of the world’s top ten manufacturing nations for the first time. However, this isn’t a reflection of any decline in UK industry but specific factors and trends which are redrawing the contours of the global economy. These trends reinforce the need for the UK to react with a long-term industrial strategy to take competitive advantage of our undoubted strengths. This will ensure the UK retains its place at the top table of advanced manufacturing where it has many world class sectors.” The analysis of official data also shows that the United States remains the dominant export market for UK goods(2) worth £60.1bn in 2022. Germany is the second highest destination (£33.bn) while The Netherlands is third (£31bn). However, Make UK cautioned that trade with the Netherlands could be inflated artificially by goods being routed through Rotterdam for onward travel to other destinations. Ireland is the fourth largest export market (£28.2bn). Six of the top ten export markets are in the EU, worth approximately £150bn which is almost three times the exports to the US and around eight times the amount to China (£21.4bn). According to Make UK, this highlights the continued importance of the EU for UK goods and the need for the new Government to smooth out trade barriers with what overwhelmingly remains the UK’s dominant export market. By sector, the food and drink sector is the biggest contributor to manufacturing Gross Value Added (21%), followed by the Transport sector (largely aerospace and automotive) at 15%. The North West remains the biggest manufacturing area of the UK, worth £29.5bn in output and employing 330,000 people(3). The sector accounts for almost 15% of the North West economic output overall and 8% of regional employment. The East Midlands has the highest share of manufacturing as part of its regional output overall with the sector accounting for almost 16% (15.9%) of the East Midlands economy. This compares to just under 10% national average. The analysis also dispels the continuing myth that manufacturing jobs are badly paid when, in contrast, the average manufacturing salary at £38,769 is 10% higher than for the average of the economy overall at £35,404(4). 1. Source UNCTAD 2022 data. 2. UKTrade, ONS, 2024 3. ONS, 2024. 4. ONS, 2023
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