Written Evidence submitted by the Engineering and Machinery Alliance (SEI002)

The Alliance’s 14 trade associations represent 2,000 companies, mostly in mechanical and electronic engineering, with sales of £10 billion into the main supply chains (including automotive, aerospace, food, medicine, pharmaceutical, defence, oil and gas, offshore wind etc.), providing equipment, components and services. 

The mechanical engineering sector is very export oriented.  It has to be because the UK customer base is relatively small.  As a result of its exporting efforts, the sector runs a positive trade balance for the UK year after year of between three and five billion pounds Sterling according to ONS’s Monthly Review of External Trade.  The only other UK manufacturing sector to achieve the same sort of record is the chemicals industry.

Because this is such an important topic, EAMA sought the views of the 14 associations in membership, despite the very short deadline of three weeks.

The views expressed, such as they were, summarise as follows:

• Little or no obvious progress has been made since January 2016, probably for understandable reasons given the radical reorganisation since June.
• UKTI performance hasn’t been radically improved by the merger into to DIT, again for understandable reasons.  Members are aware of some promising initiatives that subsequently failed to materialise, but don’t know enough to say why they didn’t.
• The litmus test for our sector is how well the trade access scheme (TAP) meets members needs.  So far there seems to have been very little improvement.
• We still believe that for the UK to succeed in raising export performance, the UK needs a dedicated export agency, where performance and resources have a single focus so that a priori there’s no ‘soft edge blurring’ of inward investment and exporting on missions unless the prospect wishes to explore it.
• Clearly big efforts are being made:  one respondent named nine different organisations and websites accessible locally, all state funded, all signposting other organisations able to help exporting.  Some signposted each other.  But none could help with funding.
• Another stated: “Of far more significance to our company is reform to the finance area than reform of the export/ import regulations/ tariffs etc.  If you can’t get finance support to export, it frankly doesn’t matter what tariffs you face.”

March 2017