Juergen Maier, managing director of Siemens’ Industry division, predicts that the UK manufacturing sector is set for a “mini-renaissance”, with its share of GDP rising from 13% to 15-16% within a decade.

Toshiba is building an industrial motor factory in Vietnam with the aim of becoming one of the world’s top three motor suppliers, with sales worth more than $700m by 2015.

The British appliance manufacturer Dyson claims to have developed the world’s fastest, most efficient motor for domestic appliances. The Dyson Digital Motor (DDM) v2 is a single-phase brushless DC motor, which operates at speeds up to 104,000 rpm with a claimed efficiency of 84%.

At the recent Hannover Fair, the Italian motor-maker Lafert unveiled a novel range of permanent magnet (PM) synchronous motors with integrated sensorless vector drives, designed in collaboration with an Italian industrial design institute.