January 2024 www.drivesncontrols.com 8 Southern Manufacturing & Electronics 2024 6-8 February, 2024 Farnborough The annual regional event is aimed at people involved in design, engineering production and procurement. They can see the latest in production hardware, components, consumables and other technologies. The organisers expect around 800 exhibitors and 9,000 visitors. www.industrysouth.co.uk Hannover Messe 22-26 April, 2024 Hannover, Germany The industrial megashow returns bringing together exhibitors from digital industries, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and the energy sector. Key topics will include Industry 4.0/Manufacturing-X, digitisation, AI and machine learning. The fair will include a Research and Innovation Summit for the rst time. The partner country is Norway. www.hannovermesse.de/en Talking Industry Live 30 April, 2024 Location: MTC, Coventry, UK Building on the foundations laid at the inaugural event in 2023, TI Live will provide delegates from the manufacturing and engineering sector with an opportunity to learn, grow and connect in a high-end environment. https://talkingindustry.org/ talking-industry-live Drives & Controls 4-6 June, 2024 NEC, Birmingham Now part of Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week, the Drives & Controls show will run alongside other events including Air-Tech, Fluid Power & Systems, Maintec, Smart Factory Expo and Design & Engineering Expo. It will cover areas including industrial automation, energy eciency, machine safety, drives, motion controls, power transmission and robotics. www.mandeweek.co.uk/ drives-controls-expo-home Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week 5-6 June, 2024 NEC, Birmingham The event will include the Maintec, Smart Factory Expo and Design & Engineering Expo shows and will run alongside Drives & Controls, AirTech, Fluid Power & Systems. The organisers say the “Festival of Industrial Innovation” represents the future of manufacturing and engineering in the UK. As well as the exhibitions there will be conferences and summits. www.mandeweek.co.uk n NEWS THE GOVERNMENT HAS announced plans to expand the Made Smarter Adoption programme to the whole of the UK as part of its newly-announced £4.5bn of funding for British manufacturing. The programme helps small and mediumsized manufacturers to use digital technologies. Since it launched in 2018, it has helped more than 2,500 manufacturers in limited regions of England, through grant funding, technology advice and skills training. Now the government is planning to expand the scheme to other parts of England in 2025-26, before working with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to explore making the programme UK-wide from 2026-27. Stephen Phipson, CEO of the manufacturers’ organisation Make UK, has welcomed the move. “Make UK has long campaigned for Made Smarter to be a fully national scheme so that all SME manufacturers can benefit from the expertise the programme delivers and we are delighted at today’s decision from government to commit to a national rollout. “Made Smarter has already transformed thousands of companies in the North East, North West, West Midlands and Yorkshire & the Humber and now it can help turbocharge industrial digitalisation in SMEs across the whole of the country,” he adds. “The endto-end specialist support the programme delivers has successfully helped smaller businesses to dramatically boost productivity, improve energy efficiency, drive growth, upskill roles and deliver new jobs in digital skills to create workforces of the future which will allow Britain’s smaller manufacturers to continue to grow and remain globally competitive.” The plans to expand Made Smarter are part of £4.5bn of funding for British manufacturing to boost economic growth announced by the Government. This will be targeted at eight sectors it regards as being key to economic growth, energy security, and levelling-up. They include automotive, aerospace, life sciences and clean energy. The funding will be available for five years from 2025, providing industry with longer term certainty. More than £2bn has been earmarked for the automotive sector and £975m for aerospace, supporting production, development and supply chains for zeroemission vehicles, and investment in efficient and zero-carbon aircraft. The government has also committed £960m to a Green Industries Growth Accelerator for clean energy manufacturing, and £520m for life sciences manufacturing. The government says it is targeting the funds at what it regards as the UK’s strongest sectors, including those where the industry is undergoing fundamental changes to remain at the forefront of the global transition to netzero emissions. Announcing the £4.5bn programme, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said: “Britain is now the eighth-largest manufacturer in the world, recently overtaking France. To build on this success, we are targeting funding to support the sectors where the UK is or could be worldleading. Our £4.5bn of funding will leverage many times that from the private sector, and in turn will grow our economy, creating more skilled, higher-paid jobs in new industries that will be built to last.” The UK manufacturing sector accounts for more than 43% of all UK exports and employs around 2.6 million people. Made Smarter to go UK-wide in £4.5bn manufacturing plan Hunt: the £4.5bn investment will create skilled, higher-paid jobs in new industries that will be built to last
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