Scotland's Economy

Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service Conference

March 29, 2012 by Lena Wilson No Comments | Category Exports

Lena Wilson addresses SMAS Conference

As a key part of the Scottish Enterprise family, the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service (SMAS) has come a long way since its birth seven years ago. Since then, manufacturing has changed enormously in line with the changes in the global economy and SMAS has developed and flexed its offering in response to these changes.

In Scotland, manufacturing has moved successfully over the past few decades from low value to high value niche markets and although the overall numbers employed have fallen, Scotland is still home to more than 8000 manufacturing companies – 93% of which are Scottish owned.

Today the sector employees 172,000 people in mostly higher value jobs. Manufactured exports are up and, since the recession, manufacturing has accounted for a fifth of all economic growth.

This context provided the backdrop to our national manufacturing conference which took place in Dunblane this week. With around 150 delegates at dinner and over 300 at the main conference the following day, the mood was upbeat and optimistic about the second half of the year and beyond.

The work that the SMAS team do is clearly highly valued and making a real impact – delivering around £80 million in productivity benefits to the companies supported, often allowing them to invest those saving is further innovation and growth in international markets.

A great example of this in practice was the news from the conference that we’ve awarded global network infrastructure company, CommScope, £275,000 in grant funding to develop a new manufacturing production line at its Fife facility.

We simplified the grant process for the company, bringing RSA, R&D and Training Plus grants into a single contract which is easier for the company to manage and removes admin from the application process. This new production line has a capital expenditure of £1 million, and will safeguard over 90 jobs in Scotland and allow CommScope to diversify into new cable products

Given the number of negative reports we hear about the economy, it was incredibly pleasing to hear so many companies talk about their plans and be positive about the future at the Conference. It struck me that while we absolutely can’t ignore the macro economic situation in Scotland, we equally can’t forget about the many success stories that are happening in individual companies up and down the country. It is these companies that will help to drive growth in the Scottish economy both now and in the coming years and we need to do everything we can to help them grow.

Tags: manufacturing, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service, SMAS

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