Member Article

Carfulan Group welcomes advanced manufacturing 'Budget' boost

Chris Fulton, Managing Director of Derbyshire-based Carfulan Group, gives his views on yesterday's budget.

"For too many years, the UK has been left behind when it comes to investment in automation and the latest technology – one of the key reasons why we have been found wanting in the productivity stakes when compared to our European counterparts.  

There is a hell of a long way to go to close the gap, but have we finally found a Chancellor that gets manufacturing and the conditions the sector requires to accelerate investment in new technologies?  

We may not get time to answer this question in full with a General Election looming, but there has definitely been some signs that Jeremy Hunt values industry and its role in driving forward economic growth for the UK.  

The £360m announcement at the start of the week for advanced engineering and R&D seems like good news on the surface. However, for a lot of the domestic supply chain to benefit, a large proportion of this funding needs to be spent with UK companies, who will then invest back into the economy and hopefully in some of the state-of-the-art equipment we sell at our base in the East Midlands.  

Extending the full expensing of leased assets is a huge positive, yet the devil will again be in the detail and how long it will take this draft legislation to come into force. If it gets dragged through the bureaucratic corridors of Whitehall, we may still be discussing what it looks like this time next year and that’s going to shackle how quickly companies spend.

 Despite the nature of our business being firmly rooted in technology, people are still our key asset and I think our workforce will broadly welcome the unexpected increase in child benefit threshold and a reduction in National Insurance. This is a major positive for the UK workforce.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Russ Cockburn .