Caleb Moss's workday starts early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, before the sun comes up. At 4:30 a.m., he reports to his post in tool and die at Virco Manufacturing. Under the guidance of a mentor, he turns steel into high-precision tools and molds used throughout the plant. At 9:00 a.m., Moss leaves the plant and heads to Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, Ark., for a full day of instruction, beginning with math class and moving on to hands-on training on machines similar to those Moss uses on the job.
Midton, headquartered in Lochgilphead, has installed a biomass-powered autoclave as part of a £429,000 upgrade designed to increase output and improve efficiency at its foundry. The move strengthens its position as one of Europe's leading producers of cast acrylic products and one of only a handful of specialist acrylic foundries worldwide. The new autoclave significantly increases the scale, speed and complexity of castings the company can undertake, allowing it to meet growing demand from the international events and awards industry.
Claim: There's not much manufacturing. If you look at the UK, about 25 years ago no, about 1995 I think it was about 25% of our GDP was manufacturing, and Germany was about the same, 25%. So we're going back what, 30 years? Today Germany's still up there, 20-21% of its GDP is manufacturing, in the UK it's down at about 8%. So manufacturing's collapsed in the UK.
India is set to spend a record amount on infrastructure and defense, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament on Sunday. New Delhi plans to invest $133 billion (112 billion) in infrastructure and $85 billion on defence an increase of around 9% and 15%, respectively, compared to last year's budget. The finance minister also announced that the government will scale up manufacturing across seven strategic sectors. They include pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, rare earth magnets, chemicals, capital goods, textiles and sports goods.
MacNeil founded the company, which makes weather-resistant car floor mats, in 1989, according to its website, and he owns 100 percent of the company. WeatherTech has made it a mission to keep its manufacturing and workforce in the US. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson congratulated MacNeil on X and called him an "outstanding businessman and great patriot," sharing a clip from a news segment where MacNeil shared his commitment to manufacturing in the US.
In the last several weeks of 2025 alone, nuclear startups raised $1.1 billion, largely on investor optimism that smaller nuclear reactors will succeed where the broader industry has recently stumbled. Traditional nuclear reactors are massive pieces of infrastructure. The newest reactors built in the U.S. - Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia - contain tens of thousands of tons of concrete, are powered by fuel assemblies 14 feet tall, and generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity each.
One reason is that the pandemic brought a sharp shift in household consumption toward goods and away from services. Rural America, the manufacturing heartland, benefited from job growth in 2022 and 2023. That growth slowed by 2024, but legislation like Sen. Todd Young's CHIPS and Science Act offered at least a hint that we might be entering a period of more stable factory employment.
Factory orders in long-struggling Germany unexpectedly posted a sharp jump in November, boosted by higher demand for defence equipment as Europe rushes to rearm, official data showed Thursday. New orders increased 5.6 percent month-on-month, according to preliminary figures from statistics agency Destatis, the third straight monthly increase. Analysts surveyed by the financial data firm FactSet had expected a decline of 1.3 percent. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted Germany and other European countries to start re-arming, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowing to unleash hundreds of billions of euros on defence.
Acer made a big splash at CES 2025 with the announcement of its surfboard-sized Nitro Blaze 11 gaming handheld, but its targeted second-quarter release came and went long ago. There's been no word of the chunky 11-inch Blaze or its smaller siblings.
The Museum of Craft and Design is proud to present Pecha Kucha: Architecture and Manufacturing in the Bay Area. Translating to 'chit-chat' in Japanese, Pecha Kucha is a fast-paced presentation format in which each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each. Pecha Kucha Wednesday, January 21, 2025 | 5-7p Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third St., SF General Admission |$45 MCD Member Tickets (fees included)
In a long-vacant industrial building on Mare Island, once a vital cog in the U.S. Navy's shipbuilding machine, a very different kind of manufacturing hum has taken hold. Where trains once rolled inside carrying steel and supplies for submarines and ships, technicians now strip, rebuild and re-engineer classic vehicles, many of them reborn as electric cars designed to meet modern expectations of performance, safety and reliability.
For industries built on rigid schedules and office walls, Gen Z's flight toward flexibility isn't just a trend; it's a tectonic shift that threatens to leave traditional careers gathering dust. It's no secret that Gen Z is shaking up the workforce with their unique perspective on work, life, and everything in between. From their preference for digital interactions to their demand for work-life balance, this generation is steering away from careers that once seemed stable and go-to options.
"This is good news for us. It keeps us alive for the long term," he says. "It keeps 500 employees employed, and it keeps a global brand, based in Boston, viable," he says. "We just signed a long-term lease on our headquarters as a result of this and are keeping all of the engineers, R&D, and software development in this building."
The Brussels-based electric bike company has officially closed its deal to be acquired by ReBirth Group Holding, which also owns cycling brands Peugeot, Gitane, and Solex. The transaction includes new, undisclosed funding from ReBirth as well as €15 million ($17.6 million) from existing shareholders. The funding will be used to restart production and deal with a backlog of spare parts, the companies say.
Federal data belatedly released Tuesday shows that the US unemployment rate rose to the highest level in four years last month as President Donald Trump's administration continues its assault on the government's workforce and American corporations lay off workers at a level not seen in decades.
I'm French, but I absolutely love living in LA. Still, during my maternity leave, I returned to Paris to be closer to my family. There, my baby adored singing books. She was only a few months old, but they kept her engaged. When we returned to America, I couldn't find anything similar. At the same time, I was learning all the English nursery rhymes I hadn't grown up with. I loved singing rhymes like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Patty Cake."
If cozy, lived-in beds dressed in rich colors and whimsical prints keep popping up on your social feed, the photos are probably of Piglet In Bed bedding. The West Sussex-based home brand nails the cottagecore look with its viral linen bedding, which is why it's all over my Pinterest board. But is Piglet In Bed worth all the hype it gets online?
Encryption rates in ransomware attacks on manufacturing companies have fallen sharply. Only 40 percent of attacks resulted in actual encryption, the lowest level in five years and a significant drop from 74 percent last year. However, attackers are compensating for this with a different tactic: extortion without encryption rose from 3 percent in 2024 to 10 percent in 2025. They are increasingly relying on stolen data as a means of pressure.
A Northamptonshire manufacturer of sustainable warehouse storage and packaging solutions is expanding its global footprint after securing £1.6 million in government-backed finance. Pallite Group, based in Wellingborough, has won new export opportunities across Europe, the US, Asia, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, prompting the need for additional working capital to keep pace with growing international demand. The company has now secured a £1.6 million corporate facility from KBC Bank, supported by UK Export Finance's (UKEF) General Export Facility (GEF).
India has announced a sweeping set of labour reforms, saying it will implement four long-delayed labour codes that the government says will modernise outdated regulations and extend stronger protections to millions of workers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X on Friday that the overhaul would provide a strong foundation for universal social security, minimum and timely payment of wages, safe workplaces and remunerative opportunities.
In the late 2010s, at the height of the direct-to-consumer boom, Framebridge founder Susan Tynan was green with envy. Many other venture-backed startups from the era-like Casper, Away, and Glossier -were growing much faster than her custom framing business. While these other buzzy brands focused on acquiring customers and growing revenue, Tynan was using her $81 million in venture funding to tackle more arduous operational issues, like building factories and hiring hundreds of craftspeople to make frames by hand.
There's no shortage of noise coming out of San Francisco and New York with AI breakthroughs, billion-dollar valuations and the race to back the next big consumer app or fintech darling. With a crowded landscape sometimes influenced by hype, venture capital has developed a kind of tunnel vision. The fixation on what's shiny and fast-scaling has blinded many investors to the country's most foundational industries, which are the ones that really keep America running.
