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News Release from: Manufacturing Technologies Association
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 06 July 2004
New Secretary for EAMA
The Engineering and Machinery Alliance (EAMA) has appointed Rupert Hodges to the role of Secretary following Jim Hewitt's retirement at the end of June.
The Engineering and Machinery Alliance (EAMA) has appointed Rupert Hodges to the role of Secretary following Jim Hewitt's retirement at the end of June Hewitt had been Secretary since the EAMA's launch in 2001
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 1 Dec 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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The alliance comprises six associations representing firms operating in value added engineering, mostly as SMEs.
They originally came together to create greater critical mass when representing the views of their members to Government and the media.
More recently, as Government has given RDAs increased responsibility for economic development, EAMA's remit has been extended to link in with the RDAs.
EAMA aims also to be a force more generally supporting manufacturing, where SMEs account for 50% of the jobs in the sector's nearly 300,000 businesses.
There has been a big change in the Government's attitude towards manufacturing in the last three years.
"It's thanks in part to the good work of Jim Hewitt and his colleagues at EAMA that there is a better recognition of manufacturing's core role in a modern diversified economy", Rupert Hodges commented.
"However, SME manufacturers are still waiting for practical measures from Government that will simplify the running of their businesses, rather than imposing ever greater complexities so this is an area where EAMA will want to campaign hard".
Before his appointment by EAMA, Hodges, working on the alliance's behalf, undertook a major two-tier economy study, which was subsequently the subject of a joint conference with the DTI.
He also variously ran the British Retail Consortium's and UK Steel Association's representational activities for 7 years until 2002.
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