Ohio business boost

members to the FAC and anticipate another four or five joining soon – they are both UK and US firms.

“Inward investment to the UK will be from Jergens Inc, a precision manufacturer, Lone Star, which provides analytics, and Duke Manufacturing. All want to open here or grow their UK business.

“Another US firm we had positive discussions with was Gertsburg Licata, an affordable law firm that helps UK companies open in America.

“British firms planning to set up in the US are Blue Abyss, a tech business, Bloc-digital, which maximises digital asset potential, and TISICS, a metal composites business.

“FAC members including Materion, another metal composites company, also attended the summit, which included a tour of NASA’s Research Facility.

“FAC exists to win business for members and we were able to speak at the summit to representatives from major companies including Boeing, Airbus, Safran, Embraer, GE Aerospace and Parker.

“The work done on the visit will bring investment to the UK, particularly the Farnborough and wider Hampshire area, and will also create jobs.

“Britain is a world leader in aerospace, a sector that is now including more businesses looking to the potential of space travel. 8 fac.org.uk

A team from The Digital Gap and Studio 77 had a great couple of days filming at two West Midlands foundries, Alucast Ltd, and Newby Foundries Group Ltd, as part of a wider pilot project aimed at encouraging more young people to consider a career in the castings industry (as part of the wider engineering and manufacturing sector).

The filming was to create a 360 degree ‘virtual tour’ of a foundry which can then be viewed by using a simple VR headset and taken into local schools and colleges to show children, college students and their teachers the range of roles that are on offer. The VR tour will be supported by some film clips of young people in the industry talking about their jobs and what they like about working in the casting industry, as well as a new website and careers leaflet.

“It’s not just about pouring metal,” explains Cast Metals Federation CEO Pam Murrell, “albeit that is important of course, but we also want to show that there are jobs in design and simulation, in 3D printing and CNC machining, in moulding, tooling and patternmaking, not to mention HR, sales & marketing and procurement.

“Our industry can offer interesting and exciting roles and is growing internationally – plus we use secondary materials (ie scrap metal) as our main raw ingredient, so the industry is an important part of the circular economy for metals - foundries were the original recyclers