The Institute for Manufacturing said in its ‘Making the
right things in the right places’ report of 2007
(Machinery: www.is.gd/ehacef ) that “many rms are
relying too heavily on short-term outsourcing and
offshoring to countries such as India and China”.
So, today UK manufacturing is some 10% of GDP,
while at the turn of the century it was 20%, although it
also drove a further 15% of GDP, according to professor
Lord Kumar Battacharyya. His sentiment was echoed in
a report of 2018 published by the Manufacturing
Technologies Association ( www.is.gd/wuvofe ), which said:
“The sector is responsible for 23% of UK GDP, well over
double the gure that is routinely quoted, and is
responsible for ve million more jobs than often
thought.” But it is smaller today, clearly.
To reshoring, though. We tackled the topic in 2013
(Machinery: www.is.gd/juside ). Talk of reshoring had
emerged in 2009, with Make UK (then EEF) releasing a
survey that showed that about one in seven companies
with production in a low labour cost economy had
returned some of that activity to the UK in the previous
two years. But the proportion of manufacturing
companies with some production outside the UK grew
from 32 to 42% between 2009 and 2012 – with about a
quarter expecting that to increase moderately in the next
two years, we wrote. A mixed message, then.
In the same 2013 article, the trend towards product
innovation and agile supply, and not merely lowest cost
manufacture, was noted by Associate Parliamentary
Manufacturing Group (APMG) manager Thomas Kohut.
APMG was set up to encourage the exchange of
knowledge and understanding between Parliament and
the manufacturing industries. It had published a report
on reshoring ( www.is.gd/ejebay ) in February 2013. The
report’s summing up included this: “There is concern,
however, that the decline in UK manufacturing over the
past two decades has resulted in a perceived drought of
adequate supply chains.” We will hear that echoed again
later in this article.
A government initiative of the day that was helping
supply chain companies gear up, drawn along by
partnering OEMs, was the Advanced Manufacturing
Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI), which had been launched
in 2011. The scheme provided subsidies for capital
investment, research and development, plus training for
industrial projects involving collaborations across supply
chains. The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders
(SMMT) was making use of this scheme to build up the
automotive supply chain on the back of car OEM
investment of the time. (A similar initiative today is the
National Manufacturing Competitive Levels (NMCL)
Automotive Programme, while for aerospace rms, there’s
SC21/Sharing in Growth).
As it happens, the automotive industry had been
undertaking a proxy reshoring analysis via its local
content studies. First started in 2009, reports in 2011
and 2015 followed. And there appeared to be good
news. The 2015 publication noted that the amount of
value sourced by UK car manufacturers from UK
suppliers had increased by ve percentage points, from
36% in 2011 to 41% in 2015. This publication followed
a November 2014 Automotive Council report
( www.is.gd/sejufo ) that highlighted £2bn-worth of
opportunities for UK suppliers, with this adding to a
£3bn gure identi ed the previous year. And in 2016, the
SMMT launched its Automechanika exhibition, saying
there was a £4bn opportunity on offer for UK suppliers,
helpfully listing the components that they might start
churning out ( www.is.gd/afohun ). The opportunity has
not been realised in any great part, however.
Government had climbed on board the reshoring train
more explicitly in the meantime. In 2014, the Liberal
Democrat/Conservative coalition government launched
the Reshore UK initiative ( www.is.gd/ohalip ,
www.is.gd/dizale ) – “a new one-stop-shop service to help
companies bring production back to the UK”. It was
heralded by then Prime Minister David Cameron, but the
effort didn’t survive too long.
Returning to that Machinery 2013 article again, we
see the beginnings of what will become today’s
Reshoring UK. Originating trade association GTMA was
operating its Manufacturing Resource Centre (as it still
does), talking to OEMs about the possibility of placing
work with UK toolmakers and precision machinists, with
this further supported by its Tooling Alliance – which
sees Tier 1 companies approached to let them know
GTMA has identi ed a group of UK companies that will
work together to take on some of the larger jobs that
have previously been offshored.
But perhaps the volume level around reshoring had
been turned up at this time because it was now possible
to conceive it feasible. Says one precision machinist in
the 2013 article: “An overseas price advantage of some
80% a decade ago has been progressively eroded to
nearer 30%, but it is the realisation, once again, that the
exibility of local supply, quality
issues, lead times, volume demands
and much easier face-to-face personal
contact is driving the change to return
to UK suppliers.” The spokesperson
didn’t know Covid-19 would provide a test,
of course, but industry has proved his point.
In 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May
announced plans for a new Industrial
Strategy. In December 2016,
Machinery published an
analysis of Industrial
Strategies across the years and we said of the latest:
“The image is clearly one of a more interventionist
approach, often taken as code for government direction,
harlequin9 /stock.adobe.com
LEAD FEATURE PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE – MAKING IT REAL
Main image, left:
Container ship
traffi c is a visual
proxy for increased
international trade.
According to
government ‘UK
Port Freight Traffi c
2019’ forecasts,
while overall port
traffi c is forecast
to remain
relatively fl at in
the short term,
it will grow in
the long term, with
tonnage 39%
higher in 2050
compared to 2016.
Unitised freight
traffi c (containers,
but excluding cars)
is the main driver
Below: Felixstowe
is the UK’s busiest
port, dealing with
48% of the
country’s container
trade. It is
Europe’s eighth
busiest port,
handling container
traffi c of 3.8m
TEUs. It is the UK’s
fi rst purpose-built
container handling
port, providing a
service to the
world’s largest
container ships
www.machinery.co.uk | MachineryMagazine | @MachineryTweets | September 2020 11
/ehacef
/wuvofe
/juside
/ejebay
/sejufo
/afohun
/ohalip
/dizale
/stock.adobe.com
/www.machinery.co.uk