Editor’s Comment
Storage Handling Distribution – promoting excellence in intralogistics
Editor
Peter.MacLeod@
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Contributing Editor – Property David Thame
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Peter
MacLeod Editor
COMMENT
Unlike the US and France, we are in the middle of a governmental term, which means no dramatic moves are likely to be made that will jolt the country back into another serious decline. During a recent visit to the UK’s last remaining fork lift truck factory at Craigavon, where NACCO builds to a very high quality trucks under the Hyster and Yale brands, I was once again reminded that we have the manufacturing excellence to trade our way out of the current situation. Led by the automotive sector, which is going great guns – as we closed for press, news was breaking that the Ellesmere Port Vauxhall plant is to build the new generation Astra – we have the backbone to withstand many of the threats thrown at us. Whether ours or any other industry sector could withstand the total collapse of the Euro remains to be seen.
©2012 Informa Exhibitions Ltd. All Rights reserved. ISSN: 0039-1832
SHD is editorially independent, and does not levy a charge for ‘colour separations’. The views expressed in this publication are not nessessarily those of the editor or publisher
* The formal proceedings at the BITA AGM took a record 2m 03s to complete from start to finish. Unfortunately a dispute over the timing means the stunning 2012 performance by BITA Secretary-General James Clark will have to remain provisional until a ruling is made. The dispute centred on whether to start the clock at the point when James opened the proceedings, or whether to include the time he took walking between his seat and the dais, and back again.
Another year goes by, and another set of economic forecasts from Oxford Economics are presented at the BITA AGM*. With sales of fork lift trucks in the UK returning to something like normal levels after the downturn, our sector continues to outperform the overall UK economy. The dark clouds that persist – the Eurozone crisis, the ‘double- dip’, uncertainty over interest rates – appear to be outshone by a recent spate of good news. Amidst the gloom, we have a drop in unemployment, a narrowing of the trade deficit, an increase in manufacturing output, and a sharp increase in retail sales. Sadly, the latter piece of good news was probably attributable to panic buying of fuel following a threat by tanker drivers to go on strike. Still, an increase is an increase, and with food, clothing and online all showing strong growth, our industry is ideally placed to benefit from the business this generates.
www.shdlogistics.com
Storage Handling Distribution June 2012 5
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