MCMT marks 1st birthday with major call to solve the skills gap

It’s time for industry and young people to step up to the skills table, according to the boss of the Marches Centre of Manufacturing & Technology (MCMT), one of Shropshire’s most advanced training centres.

Matt Snelson, managing director of the MCMT, used the £4 million facility’s first birthday to issue a major call to arms for local firms, schools and pupils to take full advantage of the courses and capabilities now on offer in Bridgnorth.

He believes that the employer-led consortium has fulfilled its part of the bargain by tailoring trailblazer apprenticeship courses to generate the engineers of the future and assembling an array of technical partners that can give SMEs access to machinery and ‘tech’ usually outside of their financial reach.

More than 200 delegates heard how the MCMT had met its initial targets of apprentices and upskilling opportunities, yet the bigger challenge awaits with apprenticeship recruitment ramping up rapidly and a commitment to deliver hundreds of upskilling courses.

“There’s an old saying that ‘build it and they will come’… well now is the time for industry, our schools, parents and people - both young and old - to prove that theory,” explained Mr Snelson.

“The first 12 months have been fantastic, but we don’t have the time to sit back and reflect on what we’ve achieved. We have strong targets to meet and there is still a real problem with skills in engineering and manufacturing, with many experts predicting firms experience - on average - a near 12% churn in staff every year.”

He continued: “What this means in layman’s terms is that companies will need to replace the workers they are losing and should to be looking to recruit a minimum of three apprentices per hundred employees each year in order to just stand still.

“Equally important is the need to futureproof your workforce to ensure they have the skills you are going to require in the longer-term. That’s exactly what we are offering at MCMT with a lot of the equipment being the same as the technology our apprentices will be operating when they go out on to the employer’s shopfloor and engineering functions,

“We believe we have put together the best trainers, the best equipment and the best courses, but we are also more than happy to hear from employers about new things we can offer. You need us and we need you, in order to ensure we continue to offer this essential training provision in Shropshire.”

The Marches Centre of Manufacturing & Technology is an employer-led consortium of Classic Motor Cars, Grainger & Worrall, Salop Design & Engineering and In-Comm Training.

It operates two state-of-the-art facilities in Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury and was set-up to help bridge the skills and competency gaps found in local industry, providing apprentices and thousands of upskilling opportunities between now and 2020.

MCMT www.mcmt.co.uk