Sailing home
4 Mar 2014
Are manufacturers really returning to the UK, and are they doing so in the process industries?
When the coalition government came into power four years ago, it did so promising to “rebalance” the UK’s economy away from growth based on consumption to growth based on production.
Now, just one year away from the next general election, this promise to restore manufacturing to the heart of the British economy appears to be bearing fruits: government departments including UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) are reporting a significant rise in the number of companies seeking to “reshore” – that is, return production lines to the UK from overseas.
The two bodies have joined forces to create a service called Reshore UK to help companies looking to reshore. The new advisory service’s launch was announced in January on the same day that Prime Minister David Cameron used his platform at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to deliver a speech on how he wanted Britain to become “The Reshore Nation”, a manufacturing revival that would be based largely, said Cameron, on the exploitation of the UK’s shale oil and gas reserves.
Cameron’s speech and Reshore UK’s launch followed MAS’ publication last November of a survey of 500 small and medium sized manufacturers, which found that 15% of firms had or were in the process of bringing production back, compared to just 4% moving production overseas.
