MHA MacIntyre Hudson Birmingham seeks to channel Bradley Wiggins

Chris Barlow, MHA MacIntyre Hudson

by Chris Barlow, manufacturing and engineering, advisory, MHA MacIntyre Hudson

June 21 saw the gathering of Made in the Midlands members for their annual exhibition held at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry.

As patrons of Made in the Midlands, we work very closely with the organisation, and the exhibition brings together over 200 of the Midlands brightest and best from the manufacturing arena to display their innovation, entrepreneurship and best practice across the sector.

This year’s keynote speaker was West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street. He spoke about the opportunities for the Midlands and how attractive the region is for businesses and how the sector has outperformed prediction.

He emphasised that this doesn’t mean that we can be complacent, and that a good performing manufacturing sector was “mission critical” to the region. He did acknowledge that the sector had seen some difficulty, and there had been a slight decline, but that it was getting back on track, in no small part assisted by stronger exporting. This together with new investment puts the Midlands in a very strong position to push ahead.

This year we decided to shake things up a little with some smoothie bikes taking centre stage on our stand. The aim being to cycle fast enough to activate the blender on the front to produce a delicious smoothie.

People could take part as an individual, or race against one another. The bikes proved extremely popular – we even had a queue at one point, with the winning speed being an impressive 43.6mph! We were absolutely delighted to be crowned runner-up for best stand on the day too.

Apart from being great fun, they also served to start a conversation with those that visited us on the stand, and we are already in touch with some of those visitors about working with them in the future.

Made in the Midlands is a great showcase for the region, and we’re very happy to be involved – we’ve now put our thinking caps on for next year to see how we can top the bikes!

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