UK factories are experiencing their best business conditions for four years, with factories needing to increase hiring to cope with the rising demand.
British factories are experiencing strong demand in production, not just at home but from abroad with export demand being particularly high, beating City expectations, reports The Guardian.
Research firm IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply’s monthly industry health check found that all manufacturing sectors are at their most upbeat since the summer of 2013, with the manufacturing performance index growing from 56.6 in October to 58.2 in November.
According to IHS Market, it was the 10th best showing in the survey’s 26-year history.
Rob Dobson, director at IHS Markit, said: “UK manufacturing shifted up a gear in November, with growth of output, new orders, and employment all gathering pace.
“On its current course, manufacturing production is rising at a quarterly rate approaching two per cent, providing a real boost to the pace of broader economic expansion.”
As a result, factories are taking on employees at the most rapid pace since June 2014.
Demand from overseas includes not just from the Eurozone, but also the Middle East and Asia – potential UK trading partners post-Brexit when the nation is unfettered by the EU’s restrictive rules on trade deals.
In addition, the UK was also found to have experienced record high foreign investment in the year of the Brexit vote.
The figures come in defiance of Remainer ‘Project Fear’ predictions that the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union would deliver an “immediate and profound shock” to the economy, tipping the UK into recession that would result in at least half a million jobs losses, and making the country less attractive to foreign investors.
Since the Brexit vote, and following the triggering of Article 50, the mechanism for leaving the EU, the World Bank has ranked the UK the seventh-best country in the world to do business – far above Germany and France – with the nation retaining its ranking as the third most favourable destination for companies to invest.
In July, Oxford Economics predicted that the UK would outperform EU cornerstone France, bloc powerhouse Germany, and the entire Eurozone in the coming years.