Paula Gill, chief executive, North West Aerospace Alliance


There are multiple challenges facing our manufacturers and the skills issue affects everybody.


We could start to bring more people who are not working at the moment into our manufacturing communities.


There are 150,000 ex-veterans in the North West. If we look at only 30 per cent of them being able to work we potentially could have a network of about 50,000 people. We need to tap into that.


The cost of employing people is also going up and business owners are taking the biggest hits and keeping those businesses operational is very, very difficult. That’s before you start thinking about trying to grow to meet the needs of the customer.


Looking to the future, it is the influencers who are getting kids into our manufacturing industries and we need a culture change.


It’s great to hear how so many businesses are involved in that discussion with schools, meeting younger kids.


The Northern Skills Council, which started in Lancashire, will reach every county in the North of England, and the colleges need to be involved. We need to get that going now.


The business voice is crucial in helping us build what’s necessary to develop skills and interactions with industry. We’re launching a web resource for our members to reach people who are coming out of education and looking for jobs.


Mark Preston, commercial director, MGS Technical Plastics


We’re a plastic injection moulding manufacturer in Blackburn, employing 64 people and turning over £7m a year.


We primarily supply the automative industry as a tier two supplier into the likes of Bentley, Jaguar Land Rover and Lamborghini. We also supply into electronics, construction, healthcare and other sectors. And we’re looking to diversify into other areas such as EV charging infrastructure, aerospace and defence.


In 2016 we started to cut back our costs as they were sky high and we didn’t know why, so we looked at the easy wins such


Neil Burrows, director of skills, innovation, and employer engagement, Burnley College


I’ve been at the college nearly ten years. When I started, we got our employers in and listened to what they needed.


Traditional skills were high on the list, but we also heard that they needed skills in composites, automation and digital. We responded and provided that.


We got funds from the Department for Education and we now have a composites facility, five axis CNC machining, automation and digital facilities.


We have had businesses use our CNC machining for manufacturing components because they’re fully booked with orders and they need to get things out the door quickly.


We offer our machinery to manufacturers free of charge on one condition – bring our students in and give them an experience of real- life manufacturing.


If we have a business come to us with a need and we can only meet 80 per cent of that need with our infrastructure, we will refer the remaining 20 per cent to a neighbouring college to ensure employer needs are met in full.


That collaboration means we can offer a full skills solution – the opportunity for Lancashire to be a lead in manufacturing is brilliant.


The opportunity for Lancashire is brilliant


as energy. We put solar panels on the roof. It was a massive investment, around £150,000, but it had a payback. We started to reap the rewards.


We also went into real time energy monitoring with our machines. We’ve got 20 injection moulding machines ranging from 50 tonnes to 900 tonnes and some of the readings were absolutely ridiculous.


We looked at five machines, took them out and replaced them with three new all-electric ones. The usage now is like comparing it to boiling a kettle. It is very cheap.


We also face the same skills and people challenge everyone faces so we have looked at training our own. Our main tool maker,


Michael Dugdale, managing director, Trident


One of the big challenges facing businesses is energy. It is one of the top three rising costs, alongside skills, labour and material costs.


As a professional consultancy services business, I suppose the direction of travel that’s going to provide the biggest impact for them is compliance.


We’re working with businesses on their energy efficiency. They’re looking at how to invest in affordable technologies to provide commercial returns when they are facing additional pressures and rising costs.


Manufacturing businesses sometimes forget good quality energy efficiency is a continuous improvement area.


There are amazing chief engineers and operations managers that are doing lots of great stuff to reduce energy.


But they could bring somebody in to keep testing what technology might be out there to generate more efficiencies and make that continuous improvement a strategic operation.


Sometimes legislation and government policies tie businesses up in knots. There are lots of solar and heat pump projects that get stuck in bureaucratic processes around applications to connect to the grid.


As for skills, we have apprentices and I’d like to get more engaged and involved in shaping the curriculum to our needs.


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who works onsite, used to be a chef. We had seven apprentices two years ago, which was more than 10 per cent of the workforce, and we’ve promoted from within.


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