The Scottish engineering sector has recorded a decline in output volumes in the latest quarter -the first such fall in four years - a key survey shows.
Order intake has also declined in the latest quarter.
Industry body Scottish Engineering said “2024’s third quarter scorecard for Scotland’s manufacturing sector seems to reflect the weather, with a bit of a dreich few months to report”.
It also highlighted skills shortages in the sector.
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Paul Sheerin, chief executive of Scottish Engineering, said: “For Scottish Engineering, these quarterly results didn’t match the upbeat forecast we shared at the beginning of June, but they do match the profile last year of an initial two positive quarters [followed] by a dip over the summer months.
“The final quarter of 2023 saw an improvement in order intake and, for this report, continued optimism and positive forecasts despite the actual results in quarter three suggest we may see a mirror of that full-year trend again this year.”
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He highlighted as “another metric that stands out” the “14 quarters of consecutive positive intention to hire staff”.
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Mr Sheerin said: “Is it that we have a booming growth in the people employed in our sector? Or does it underline that companies are continually striving to hire key skills whilst battling against losses due to retirement and a buoyant jobs market for key skills?”
He highlighted the election of a new UK Government as “a key talking point for the last quarter from a business point of view”.
Mr Sheerin said: “Change brings opportunity, and for our engineering sector this comes with an ambitious and laudable industrial strategy that we will be watching keenly as we hope that it yields the gains we all would like to see. “ However, he added: “Whilst we knew that the UK public purse was pretty skint, the scale of the financial challenge as perceived and portrayed by our incoming Government brings concern that not all of that ambition may be funded.”
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