COMMENT
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Andrew Allcock, Editor
No going back
There is no escaping the fact that the UK’s manufacturing sector
has been hit hard, with the aerospace sector perhaps the most
affected for the longest; automotive and oil and gas have also been
dealt major blows, though. Overall, UK manufacturing may not
recover to pre-Covid-19 levels of activity until 2022, says Make UK.
But there are few areas of the economy that have not been
impacted. Calls for support packages of one type or another are widespread across the
board, with some being given or promised by government already.
Change is being predicted across many areas: people’s views now of work-life balance;
the likelihood of continued remote working (home or co-working spaces) and a
commensurate reduction in city and office working, as well as related travel; a move to
personal, active travel with a parallel change to transport priorities to make roads safer
for pedestrians and cyclists; a greater appreciation of pollution and a wish by a great
many for it not to return; food security and safety awareness has been heightened;
there’s a greater desire to go faster toward green power generation and transport; and, of
course, there’s a greater awareness of modern distributed supply chains for all manner of
goods and the problems that can bring when there’s disruption to them.
On that latter point, there is much talk of reshoring in manufacturing. Certainly, the
government is already considering this, as the Financial Times reported in early June
(www.is.gd/cozazo). The article detailed ‘Project Defend’, described by the paper as “an
internal exercise to ensure Britain retains access to critical goods while diversifying the
country’s trading relationships”. But industry is not waiting for government to act. For
example, there is a renewed push behind Reshoring UK (www.reshoring.uk), an
established initiative that brings together many independent trade associations and
their members in a collective effort to promote UK manufactures to large companies
looking to subcontract. Not new (see Machinery’s article here: www.is.gd/yuziwu), but
Covid-19 will surely make companies consider this option more thoroughly.
A new initiative is UK Manufacturing Unite (www.ukmfgunite.co.uk). Created and run
by manufacturers for manufacturers, over 100 companies, including AW Precision,
Brandauer, Bruderer UK and Composite Integration to ENL, Fife Fabrications and
Photofab have already signed up to the online platform that will act as a central place
for sourcing supply solutions and as a forum for obtaining answers to issues that
businesses are facing.
We have had talk of reshoring before, but this really does feel like a tipping point.
There really cannot be a return to the pre-Covid-19 world in so many ways. UK
manufacturing really must pull together, just as it demonstrated so well and so recently
with the Ventilator Challenger UK effort, to make current reshoring talk reality. ■
www.machinery.co.uk
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www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets | July/August 2020 7
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