Our 42 under 42 programme is over for another year, finishing on a high with an awards evening at The Belfry hotel near Birmingham and a winners’ round table in Nottingham.

It was apt that these final events should be held in both the West and East Midlands because this year’s list - of 42 entrepreneurs under the age of 42 - spanned the region. This year’s Entrepreneur of the Year was Dr Kevin Hard, who runs Nottingham-based solar energy business EvoEnergy, whilst the International Entrepreneur of the Year was John Nollett of Coventry’s Pailton Engineering.

Both of these men have built extremely impressive businesses and have ambitions to turn them into £100m turnover concerns. I for one wouldn’t doubt their chances of succeeding.

This year’s crop of young business talent was probably the strongest ever and it’s great to see so many of them harbouring ambitions which will not only be good for them and their staff but for the wider Midlands economy.

The shape of that Midlands economy has again been debated this week. Manufacturing figures are always closely examined in this part of the world for obvious reasons and there seem to be mixed messages around at the moment.

After recent reports that manufacturing growth had plateaued, better prospects were predicted in Monday in the Manufacturing Outlook report from manufacturers' organisation EEF and accountancy organisation BDO which provided a "solid growth" forecast for the remainder of 2011 and 2012.

Amongst other detailed research, the report reveals that over the last six months, when the economy as a whole stagnated, manufacturing grew by 2.3 per cent.

EEF’s forecast for manufacturing growth, at 3.2 per cent this year, is down slightly from the previous quarter but engineering is projected to expand by more than 6 per cent.

Great news of course although Jason Whitworth, a partner at BDO, pointed out a potential problem.

"What we are witnessing among our client base is the willingness to recruit - but it's often very difficult for employers to find people with the adequate skills set to fit the role. We are faced with a short term problem that can only be overcome by long-term solutions,” he said.

"To ensure the UK retains its competitive edge, the government must do more to emphasise education in engineering and manufacturing to guarantee its future workforce has the appropriate skills to deliver the sector’s needs."

It is a point that a number of our 42 under 42 winners reiterated at a recent round table discussion. When they should be concentrating on providing new recruits with the specific training they need for the job at hand, they are too often finding that that - in the case of school leavers at least - that they do need even have the basic literacy and numeracy skills necessary to do any job.

This is a dreadful state of affairs and the more so because it is no longer shocking when employers tell you these things. The Midlands is not unique in this regard of course but we are faring as badly as any other area in the UK when it comes to both basic skills and the higher level skills sought by our manufacturing companies.

There’s no quick fix to this stuff of course and the region’s colleges are doing a good job working with employers to meet their training needs.

But if there’s one message that our manufacturing businesses are sending to government, local enterprise partnerships and business support organisations it is this: sort out skills. Until we get this right we will struggle to move forward as a region.