Dear Friend,

The Future of Manufacturing – North Wales and Cross-Border Summit

On 1 July, I made a written ministerial statement that an urgent high level summit would be hosted to help provide a collaborative cross-sector response to the challenges facing the aerospace and automotive sectors in key areas such as north east Wales, Merseyside and Cheshire. This summit will take place on Tuesday 4 August 12.30 – 14.30hrs and I would like to invite you to join the event.

The summit will bring together government, industry and academic leaders to help outline current policy responses, highlighting the likely impact on the sector and providing a space for constructive debate to help shape a collaborative programme of activity to effectively respond to the evolving crisis for the sector.

The event will have two main strands:

–  A plenary based session to give a political/policy, industry and academic overview with opportunities for attendees to question panel members

–  A more interactive session which gives panel members and attendees the opportunity to help provide views on immediate, medium and long term response to help shape and inform the consensus view on a future roadmap

Fellow panel members joining me include:

–  Katherine Bennett CBE, Senior Vice President, Airbus

–  Dr Brian Anthony, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Mechanical Engineering

–  Deirdre Fox, Director of Strategic Business Development, Tata Steel

–  Jeff Lewis, Chief Executive, Raytheon UK

–  Andy Richardson, Chair of the Food and Drink Wales Industry Board