EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

New Industrial Strategy Skills Commission

Make UK has launched the Industrial Strategy Skills Commission to help solve the country’s growing skills deficit in manufacturing and engineering. The organisation has brought together some of the most qualified experts in education, training and industry to diagnose the widescale problems in the skills system and create an effective talent pathway into manufacturing. It is this skilled workforce pipeline that will prove critical to the success of the Government’s new Industrial Strategy, called Invest 2035, which aims to drive growth and digital transformation in manufacturing over the next few years.

More information www.makeuk.org

Stainless steel machining webinar

On 4 December, a Seco Tools webinar will explore the challenges of dynamic turning in stainless steel. This webinar is for all machining professionals wishing to deepen their understanding of difficult materials and chip control techniques.

The programme will span: metallurgy and machining challenges for stainless steel materials; the advantages of dynamic turning; and a Q&A session that will see Seco experts respond to questions in real time. Seco is advising machining professionals not to miss this opportunity to deepen their knowledge and improve their machining processes. The webinar will take place between 15:00 and 15:45 CET. Register at the link below.More information www.bit.ly/4fvILRL

Most successful Citizen open house

In celebration of its 50 th anniversary, sliding- and fixed-head CNC lathe supplier and
automation specialist Citizen Machinery UK offered visitors to its latest open house a 100%
finance deal for machines ordered during the event. The company subsequently extended
the no-deposit arrangement to the end of that month, resulting in a record order intake of
26 turning centres valued at £4m.
Over three days, 190 customers representing 86 manufacturing companies were welcomed
through the door at Citizen’s Brierley Hill turning centre of excellence, a 40% increase on the
number that attended last year. Highlights of the show included cutting demonstrations on
all nine machines in the showroom.
More information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk

Waters opens Long bridge machine shop

Waters Corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has officially opened a
new 4181 m² manufacturing facility on the Longbridge Business Park in the West Midlands.
The new facility more than triples existing operations and enhances the company’s
machining capacity to produce components for products developed at Waters Mass
Spectrometry Centre of Excellence in Wilmslow, UK, and Wexford, Ireland.
David Clay, British Consul General to New England, says: “The fact that a leading company
like Waters has chosen the UK for this investment is a great endorsement of the regional
talent available in this sector. We look forward to seeing the new facility have a long-term
positive effect in the West Midlands.”
More information www.waters.com

Award presentation marks record year

New micro-precision tooling capability has put a Birmingham manufacturing specialist on
course for its best performance in 164 years. Brandauer, which exports 75% of the
components and tools it makes to 26 different countries, made the announcement during
the recent presentation of its King’s Award for Innovation by Derrick Anderson CBE, the Lord
Lieutenant for the West Midlands. This year has been a whirlwind period for Brandauer,
with more than £4m invested in high-speed Bruderer UK and Yamada presses, a 1-µm
capable wire EDM, a laser micro-cutter, and a rapid prototyping area.
More information www.brandauer.co.uk