Manchester Update

Leading businesses across the region are already involved in the Osaka Manchester Forum (OMF), launched in 1997 to forge links between the North West and the Kansai region of Japan.

The latest development in this growing relationship is a high profile delegation to Osaka, on October 19-24 this year. The Trade Mission is being led by MIDAS, Marketing Manchester and the North West Business Leadership Team.

Tremendous opportunities are to be gained from developing links with Osaka. The Kansai region of Japan has a greater GDP than Canada, and the Osaka Chamber of Commerce is one of the strongest and most active in Japan Ð reflecting the region’s numerous world class businesses.

Sir David Trippier, chairman of OMF: Kansai/North West England Business Forum (OMF’98) said: “Secured commitments from Zeneca, BNFL and British Telecom will provide a formidable assembly of major North West business leaders. The fact that links are already in place gives this year’s trade mission an ideal platform on which to establish tangible business benefits”.

OMF’98 has been arranged to provide North West businesses with the opportunity to present their expertise in innovative and high quality technology, and meet the needs of businesses in the Kansai region. MIDAS is centrally involved in OMF, as part of its role to attract increasing levels of inward investment to Manchester, Salford, Tameside and Trafford.

There are already numerous Japanese businesses in the area, including Brother, Sharp and Kratos Analytical (Shimadzu), and OMF provides an ideal mechanism to present the strengths of the area to potential investors.

Organisations interested in joining the delegation to Japan should contact the OMF project director, Julia Richardson, at MIDAS on 0161 877 3000

Call goes out to call centres

MIDAS and Manchester TEC have teamed up to maximise benefits to the local economy from the many call centre operations based in the Manchester area. Both organisations are looking to involve as many companies in the industry as possible in the launch of the Manchester Call Centre Forum this September.

The first step in the process is a market research programme being carried out among locally-based call centre operations by independent organisation, Questions Answered. By the beginning of June 50 firms had been contacted, but MIDAS and Manchester TEC are keen to ensure that no-one is left out.

The aim of the research programme is to identify needs, opinions and attitudes of call centre managers, in order to tackle issues such as recruitment and retention of staff, and training requirements.

Jackie Wilson of MIDAS said: “This is very much a two-way process. We are examining ways of providing the right assistance to call centre operations. The more this industry thrives, the greater the benefits to the local economy”. MIDAS will launch a major call centre campaign later this year.

If your business has a call centre operation, and you have not yet been contacted, please speak to Jackie Wilson at MIDAS on 0161 877 3000

Investing in local labour

As part of Manchester’s successful ‘Towards 2000 Together’ initiative launched last year, the Council is now encouraging developers to adopt the city’s Local Labour Scheme as part of the development process.

The scheme will, however, be a requirement in cases where land is disposed of to a private developer; the lease contains development obligations and the estimated cost of the development is in excess of £1 million net of land value.

To encourage and manage this process and support other elements of the construction sector, the City Council, Manchestrer Training and Enterprise Council, the Construction Industry Training Board, the Employment Service and local training providers, have established a dedicated partnership. Since January of this year, the partnership has assisted over 100 local people to find work with contractors locally.

For further details of the Local Labour Scheme, the developer should contact: Angie Libman in the City Council’s Economic Initiatives Group on 0161 234 1509

What employers say about the local labour scheme…
“This cheap, quick and effective method of recruitment is the envy of my collegues in other areas of the country.”
Tom Cullen-Area Labour Manager JOHN LAING CONSTRUCTION
“The scheme gives opportunities for local people to both develop their skills and gain meaningful employment with resposible companies that understand their needs and requirements”
Peter Saville-Contracts Labour Manager AMEC CONSTRUCTION

Vision 2000: The North West Japanese Institute
Following its success in the groundbreaking Osaka-Manchester Forum, the Greater Manchester Centre for Japanese Studies has committed itself to creating a permanent and accessible base to support the region’s long term relationship with Japan.

The North West Japanese Institute will be at Waterloo Place, a Grade II listed Georgian building at the entrance to the University of Manchester. The institute will provide a one-stop service for Japan-related information across the region, including Japanese language teaching and exchange programmes. It will also deliver business and commercial services, including first stop and advisory services for Japanese and North West companies and will assist with support mechanisms for SMEs.

The Waterloo Place project has won the 1997 Japanese World Expo’ Foundation Prize from the Japanese government and the Osaka Chamber of Commerce has already donated 7 million Yen. The University of Manchester has given a further £50,000 towards refurbishment costs.

Preliminary work on refurbishment is underway and the main phase should be complete by October 1998 Bursary winner picks up partnership approach Manchester City Council and the Japan Centre recently organised the visit of Miss Nami Kondo, the first winner of an educational bursary designed to strengthen economic links between the two city regions. Miss Kondo won the bursary for her vision of taking the relationship between Manchester and Osaka forward into the next millennium. She used her time here and contacts she made to learn about urban development, local economic activities and the promotion of cities.

During her trip Miss Kondo visited the University with Will Eades, Director of the Development and Alumni Relations Office. She visited Waterloo Place, the future home of the Japan Centre, which is being refurbished with money raised by the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Manchester Science Park, where she was given a guided tour by Dr John Allen.

Commenting on her visit, Miss Kondo said: “What has impressed me most about Manchester is the fact that there is so much partnership in evidence: partnership between public organisations, private business and between the city’s universities”

Virtual business support

A new state of the art network designed to bring specialist business support and advice services to managers of small to medium sized businesses has been launched in Manchester. The Virtual Chamber (TVC) is a collaboration between the University of Salford, Cable & Wireless, Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Manchester TEC.

Local companies will be able to access the high speed private network directly from their desktop PCs, enabling them to contact other members and search the network for potential customers and suppliers, business, training and financial information. Subscribers will also be able to create their own web-site. Other services including video conferencing, the Internet and online credit card sales are also available.

European funding for the project will enable TVC to offer free connection for up to 450 firms based in Salford, Manchester and Tameside and parts of Trafford. For further information on The Virtual Chamber please contact Steve Carroll, TVC Product manager on 0161 245 4846

Japan Festival Fund Awards 1998

The UK Japan Society has won the Japan Festival Fund Award 1998. The aim of the Festival Fund, established six years ago as a lasting reminder of the Japan Festival 1991, is to reward excellence and promotion of Japanese culture in the UK.

Each year major cash prizes are awarded for recent outstanding achievements in furthering the understanding of Japanese culture in the UK. The UK Japan Society is a non-profit making voluntary organisation which has been established in the North West to promote: – commercial, industrial, social, educational and cultural links between Japan and North West England. – investment in the North West by Japanese companies – mutual understanding of respective customs and attitudes.

A varied programme of events is arranged by the society to appeal to both corporate and individual members. Recent events included an evening with Elgar at the Bridgewater Hall; concert and buffet, sponsored by Brother Industries. Guest of honour was Miss Nami Kando from Osaka Chamber of Commerce, the winner of the two-week educational bursary the City of Manchester presented to the City of Osaka Manchester Forum’97.

Manchester is enjoying a booming visitor trade. Figures produced by the EuroCity Survey show occupancy rates have risen for the sixth year in succession, with a rate for 1998 of 75.8 per cent.

Demand is set to increase as the City prepares to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games and as Manchester’s profile increases, both within the UK and internationally.

A recent survey of hotel facilities reveals over 25 hotels within the City Centre ranging in size from five to over 350 rooms. Just over 2,400 bedrooms are available, with around 4,800 bedspaces. A number of Salford hotels are also within easy reach of the City Centre.

But there is a demand for still more hotels in the city, and this is being addressed by both new and existing hotel operators. Two new hotels are taking shape, both close to the Bridgewater Hall. Greenalls’ Premier Lodge, opposite the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Midland, will add a further 147 rooms to the hotel stock when it opens in 1999. Jury’s, being built on Great Bridgewater Street to the rear of the Bridgewater Hall will add a further 260 bedrooms.

Proposals are in hand for up to nine further hotels which could yield a total of 1,700 more bedrooms. Existing hotels are also looking at new opportunities. The Palace Hotel on Oxford Road has been gradually bringing more of the Refuge Building into use, and further expansion into the adjacent Excalibur Building could put the current total of 171 rooms up to between 220-260.

The Victoria & Albert on Water Street, next to the Granada Studio Tours complex, is to add around 64 new bedrooms, together with a leisure centre, while the Manchester Conference Centre at UMIST is planning an increase from 74 to 113 rooms.

The hotel market is also expanding outside the City Centre. At the airport, Radisson SAS will complete its 354-bed, five-star scheme later this year. The Holiday Inn Garden Court, opened in spring 1996, is already planning a 66-bed extension, while the Etrop Grange has recently undergone a £1.7 million extension which added 24 rooms.

Other recent hotel proposals include Parrs Wood in Didsbury, and Sharston and Atlas Business Parks in Wythenshawe

On June 21 1948, shortly after 11am, an event took place at the University of Manchester which shook the world and put Manchester at the forefront of a global technological revolution.

The event was the birth of the world’s first stored program computer, or the ‘Baby’, as it became known. It had been a race between Manchester, Cambridge and Teddington in the UK and Philadelphia in the US. The race was won in Manchester when Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn successfully ran the first program on their innovative machine, the ‘Baby’.

Until this point, information could only be processed mechanically via punched cards, dating from the time of Babbage’s original calculating machine, but not stored electronically. By using what we now call ‘software’, the ‘Baby’ became the model for the modern day computer.

To make the idea of a stored program a reality required pioneering design skills and concentrated effort. A revised version of the ‘Baby’ was later made available to a much wider community when a commercial version, known as the Mark 1, was built by Ferranti.

Digital Summer 98 is a celebration of this world first event. Throughout the summer, many organisations and individuals from across the Manchester city region will be joining forces and staging events to promote a wider public interest and involvement in local and national achievements in innovative and creative uses of new technologies.

The University of Manchester is celebrating the birth of the ‘Baby’ with academic conferences, a live video-link ‘switch on’ of the replica ‘Baby’ and a celebration concert at the Bridgewater Hall. A public open day in the Department of Computer Science in June, showed how, 50 years on, the university is still at the leading edge of computing developments.

Manchester Museum’s The Birth of the Baby Exhibition, running until September 19, looks at computers past and present and includes some of the original components used in the first machine as well as an electronic future with interactive TV, virtual reality and Internet conferencing.

The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has opened a new Futures Gallery which explores the past and future of communications and features state-of-the-art and historic technologies. This includes the replica ‘Baby’ machine – rebuilt by Chris Burton and the Computer Conservation Society and sponsored by ICL.

Manchester City Council is co-ordinating a series of public arts and music events throughout the summer, including D.percussion, a day-long free festival of music and digital art, and ds98@theGreenRoom, a three-week programme of digital installations, performances and screenings. In addition, as a founding member of the Telecities network and the European Digital Cities project, Manchester City Council is hosting a series of international seminars and conferences, bringing together key players in telematics from all over Europe.

The City Council is also supporting a Cyberschools project as a legacy to Digital Summer 98, which will encourage the use of new technologies in all Manchester schools. At the end of Digital Summer 98, Manchester’s Electronic Commerce – e-commerce – week, September 7-11, provides a unique opportunity to explore the future of business on the Internet.

Manchester will be hosting the G8 International Conference on Electronic Commerce on September 7-8 together with European, regional and local seminars and exhibitions on e-commerce on September 9-11. Together with the International Symposium on Electronic Art – ISEA 98 – on September 5-7, and more digital arts events through September, Manchester continues to be at the cutting edge of the new technologies.