Despite a high degree of volatility from month to month and process to process, the overall value of the UK contract manufacturing market held steady in the third quarter of 2018.

Qimtek’s Contract Manufacturing Index (CMI) for the quarter was 223, just 1.3% down on the previous quarter and 3.7% up on the equivalent period in 2017. The baseline figure of 100 represents the value of the subcontract market in 2014 when the CMI was launched.
Behind the headline figure there were major movements in the make-up of the market. Fabrication, which had been in the ascendancy and represented 56% of the market in the previous quarter, had dropped by 27% and now represents 43% of the market. Machining on the other hand, which had dropped to 35% of the total, rose by 23.4% and currently represents 44% of the market. This appears to signal a reversal of the trend in the previous quarter of companies bringing more machining back in-house.
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