A call to stop manufacturing doubt

Cambridge, UK - It seems that every UK politician is looking to Germany and asking: “Why can’t we have an economy like theirs?”

Of course, there are some differences between the fundamentals of our two economies, but I suspect the things that are preventing UK industry from emulating Germany’s long running success are not physical, geographical or political - they are mainly psychological.

I suspect that if Berlin had originally won the 2012 Olympic bid, a German person’s reaction would have been: “Great, we will now do fantastic job, ja!”

The original British reaction was: “Oh no - we’ll probably make a right mess of this,” - especially from the BBC, the ‘British Bashing Corporation’.

But we didn’t - we made a success of it because a group of people held their nerve, believed in a goal and focused their efforts to achieve something worthwhile. And what a massive impact it had.

I was never prouder than when I watched that Olympic opening ceremony. We could do with a similar, gritty resolve in UK manufacturing.

We should stop the doubting, cut out the whinging and start believing in ourselves - in the same way the UK did in the past.

I freely admit that Zettlex has pinched the German ‘Mittelstand’ idea of being a specialist, high-tech manufacturing company. We export our precision position sensors all over the world - even to Germany.

We expect that exports will shortly account for most of our revenues. I only wish we could buy more of our components from UK manufacturers.