Sector: Manufacturing

Manufacturing and engineering employers’ body the EEF has issued a call for the government to provide secure investment in its forthcoming Pre-Budget Report.

Public finances need to be restored and support for the UK’s productive sectors should continue, insisted the EEF, which represents engineering, manufacturing and tech-based businesses and whose policy director Steve Radley argues that ‘failure to do this risks pulling the rug out from under companies’.

Furthermore, the organisation, warning that business should not have to shoulder the burden of higher taxes, recommends extending the 40 per cent capital allowances for another 12 months and freezing small companies’ corporation tax rate until April 2011.

That the manufacturing sector remains under huge recessionary pressures is evidenced by recent gloomy results issued by its smaller quoted company constituents.

One struggling AIM counter is Turbotec Products, which designs and makes high-performance heat exchangers and heat transfer tubing and reported reduced sales and pre-tax profits of $9.7 million (H1 2008: $14.9 million) and $900,000 (H1 2008: $1.5 million) respectively for the half to September, not helped by the weak US housing market. Nevertheless, management insist that the company is well placed to capitalise on ‘the long-term market opportunities for highly energy-efficient heating and cooling devices’, once the economy begins to recover.