29th January 2025
In her speech on January 29, 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves outlined the UK government’s strategy to stimulate economic growth.
Key initiatives include endorsing the construction of a third runway at Heathrow Airport, aiming to enhance connectivity and create approximately 100,000 jobs. Reeves also emphasised strengthening ties with the European Union and the United States to boost trade and support businesses. Additionally, she announced plans to develop the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor into a “Silicon Valley of Europe,” focusing on advancements in artificial intelligence and life sciences. These proposals aim to modernise infrastructure, increase productivity, and promote sustainable economic development across the UK.
PP Control & Automation CEO, Tony Hague reacted to today’s speech:
“Nothing in the chancellor’s speech was overtly negative, in fact the language was positive, and businesses will welcome the genuine change in tone and direction to speed up investment, remove bureaucracy, and press ahead with a new modern industrial strategy. It feels like Rachel Reeves and her team have finally woken up to the fact that talking down the economy is not the best driver of growth!
“I also welcome the firm focus on national government and local councils working closer together with business, and the wider community will acknowledge the potential economic benefits of the proposed infrastructure projects.
“However, as with any strategy and political speeches, they can communicate all the right signals, but the question remains on how the grand ideas will actually be delivered.
That is the overarching sentiment from today’s speech… promising words but talk is cheap. Let’s keep an eye on the execution.”
Ian Knight, Chief Information Officer at PP Control & Automation (PP C&A) challenges the prevailing, often vague narrative around AI adoption and reframes the conversation around a more practical starting point: operational constraints.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept for manufacturers. It is already being explored across quotation, production planning, engineering, quality, supply chain and customer service functions. Yet, for many organisations, the gap between experimentation and meaningful operational impact remains difficult to close.
A leading aquaculture specialist – that is changing the way fish are vaccinated safely – has signed a major manufacturing deal.
On paper, defined discipline-specific suppliers can look organised. However, every additional supplier introduces another handoff, and every handoff creates another point where time, quality, communication and accountability can be lost.
Very rarely does growth not surface because an OEM lacks ambition. Shortcomings arise because operating models built to support such ambition don’t evolve quickly enough.
Recent weeks have brought two important industry moments into sharp focus, concluding that demand for AI and automation is rising, but investment, skills, and long-term thinking must follow.
For decades, one question has sat at the heart of operational strategy for machine builders and OEMs: make or buy? It’s a familiar debate and it isn’t the wrong question by any means, but perhaps it is an incomplete one.
In most machine building businesses, change is still treated as an exception. A late-stage drawing revision, component substitution, or wiring tweak discovered during build. Each one is handled, resolved, and signed off. And then everyone moves on. But what if that’s the wrong way to think about it? What if change isn’t the disruption to the system but the system itself?
