UK factories waited longer for supplies in September

Suppliers slowed down again

British manufacturers had a busier September than August, but they waited longer for what they ordered. The final S&P Global UK Manufacturing PMI edged up to 51.9 from 51.7, its eleventh month above 50. Supplier delivery times lengthened at the fastest rate since June, and S&P Global blamed port congestion, shipping delays, geopolitical tensions and the resulting shortages of raw materials. Input costs rose faster for the first time in four months, with firms paying more for chemicals, electronics, energy and food, and diesel pushing up transport. Growth was concentrated in investment goods, where output rose at its fastest rate since late 2017. Consumer and intermediate goods makers, and small firms, went backwards. The euro area did better, at 52.9, its highest reading since May 2022. For anyone holding stock tight to save cash, September was a month when lead times moved the wrong way. (S&P Global UK and Eurozone Manufacturing PMI, 1 October, reported by The Manufacturer, 2 October.)

Rotherham's melt shop is getting ready to restart

Up to 170 melt-shop workers at Speciality Steel UK in Rotherham are due back on site next week after months on furlough, according to Chris Williamson, branch secretary of the Community union. Their job is to bring two electric arc furnaces, a large power transformer and a continuous caster back into working order. The company has been run by the Official Receiver since it went into liquidation in summer 2025, and the government said in September that it plans to take it over. Williamson does not expect steel before December. Neither the Insolvency Service nor the business department confirmed the return. The Insolvency Service said there was 'no change to the staffing position at SSUK' and that it continues to engage with the preferred bidder. Speciality Steel makes the specialist grades that go into aircraft, defence and car parts, so a restart date is worth more to its customers than the ownership question. (Rotherham Advertiser, 30 September.)

Filtronic wins its biggest order from SpaceX

Filtronic, the Sedgefield maker of radio-frequency hardware, has won a $68.1m (£51.3m) follow-on order from SpaceX for its Cerus E-band amplifiers. They are built on gallium nitride, which runs at higher power and handles heat better than the older gallium arsenide parts. It is the largest order SpaceX has placed with the company and follows a $62.5m order in August 2025. Filtronic expects to deliver most of it in its 2028 financial year. Filtronic said the order underpins what it expects for that year. (Filtronic plc, regulatory announcement, 1 October.)

Toyota's Deeside engine plant is now carbon-neutral

Toyota's engine plant at Deeside in North Wales started carbon-neutral production on 1 October, the first Toyota plant outside Japan to do so. The last gap was closed by a £282m privately funded anaerobic digester next door, which can handle about 180,000 tonnes of local waste a year and sends biomethane and electricity to the plant underground. Toyota says that saves almost 3,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. The site also runs on renewable electricity and sends nothing to landfill. Aluminium from scrapped alloy wheels, recovered at Toyota's Burnaston site in Derbyshire, now goes into engine blocks made at Deeside. Full ISO 14068 accreditation follows a complete year of production in 2027. Toyota Motor Europe wants all its European plants carbon-neutral by 2030, which puts the next question to the people who supply them. (Toyota (GB), 1 October.)

BioNTech will close three German plants

BioNTech has failed to sell its sites in Marburg, Tübingen and Idar-Oberstein and will close them. About 1,800 people work there. Tübingen, the former CureVac headquarters, shuts at the end of 2027, Marburg in early 2028 and Idar-Oberstein at the end of 2028. Marburg has made mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and plasmid DNA, a starting material for mRNA vaccines and cell therapies. Idar-Oberstein makes medicines for early-stage clinical trials. BioNTech said it approached manufacturers and investors in mRNA, antibodies, plasmids, and cell and gene therapy, and none of the talks reached a deal. For anyone sourcing plasmid DNA or early-stage clinical manufacturing in Germany, three sites equipped for that work are going, and the dates are now set. (Tagesschau, citing BioNTech, 28 September.)

Westlake is shutting its Cologne PVC plant

Westlake, the Houston chemicals group, will close its PVC plant in Cologne in the first quarter of 2027. The plant can make about 165,000 tonnes a year. Westlake said it is smaller and costlier to run than its other European sites, and that customers will be served from its other German plants, including Wilhelmshaven, which it bought this year. It expects about $205m in pre-tax charges. Westlake told US regulators that the closure will cut about 120 jobs. Westlake gave weak demand, high energy costs and imports from Asia as the reasons. For PVC buyers in Germany, the supplier stays the same. The plant they are supplied from will change. (Westlake Corporation, press release and SEC Form 8-K, 29 September; Industrylinqs, 2 October.)

Bayer will build a $2.2bn medicines plant in Ohio

Bayer plans to spend $2.2bn on a pharmaceutical manufacturing site at New Albany, near Columbus, with about 600 jobs once running and around 1,500 during construction. The campus will be modular. A drug substance module is due in 2031, and a module that turns it into finished medicines follows in 2034. The site will serve Bayer's cancer, heart and kidney medicines. Bayer will train staff through a state-backed life sciences training centre due to open in summer 2027. Tax credits and JobsOhio support are still to be agreed. For anyone selling process equipment or cleanroom fit-out, this is a long programme with a real first date. (JobsOhio and Bayer, 2 October.)

International ends work at its Springfield truck plant ahead of sale to Roshel

International Motors, formerly Navistar, ended work at its Springfield, Ohio, assembly plant on 30 September. Its July notice to the state put about 1,314 people at the assembly plant and 27 at its truck specialty centre, and said the sale to Roshel, the Canadian maker of armoured vehicles, was expected to close on 2 October. Neither company has publicly confirmed that it has. A manufacturing contract with a major carmaker, which had kept the plant busy in recent years, ended on 30 September. Roshel said it wants to protect the current workforce and, in phases, more than double it over the coming years. The Dayton Daily News reported that Roshel has not said whether it will keep on former International staff or when it will start operations. Suppliers to the plant have lost a customer and do not yet know what the new one will want. (Ohio Department of Job and Family Services WARN notice from International Motors, dated 27 July; Dayton Daily News, 1 October; Associated Press, 3 October.)

Photo: Colin Smith / Geograph, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)