THE chairwoman of the Confederation of West Midlands Chambers of Commerce has met the Trade and Industry Secretary to press home the plight of the region's manufacturers.

Isabella Moore presented Patricia Hewitt with the confederation's own strategy for the manufacturing industry, telling her that more needed to be done to support one of the most important aspects of the British economy.

The Confederation of West Midlands Chambers of Commerce brings together seven chambers from across the region - including the Chamber of Commerce Herefordshire and Worcestershire - and speaks for 13,500 businesses.

Mrs Moore highlighted the closure of Agco's Massey-Ferguson plant in Coventry, saying that chambers in the West Midlands were working with other agencies to minimise the impact on the workforce and companies in the supply chain.

Perfect example

"Agco is a perfect example of how a foreign company has decided to pull out of Britain, leaving behind hundreds of redundancies that will hit the region hard," she said.

"This factory has a highly skilled workforce, with high productivity, but was struggling to compete because of the strength of the pound and its impact on exchange rates. It will now produce its products more cheaply abroad."

She added that the Midlands was the manufacturing heartland of the UK and hoped that more support would be forthcoming through the recently-launched Regional Manufacturing Advisory Service.

"We need to make it absolutely plain to the government than any loss of the magnitude of Massey-Ferguson makes manufacturing even more vulnerable.

"They also need to appreciate how damaging measures like the climate change levy tax on energy consumption and the one per cent national insurance increase for employers will be for manufacturing."