4 things

manufacturing in the UK is a fraction of what it was even when the last labour government came to power never mind before thatcher

For 20 years we have as a country fetishised business and financial services above ‘the real economy’ when its arguable if it is socially useful

manufacturing keeps getting more and more productive so it employs less and less people for the same output which means that manufacturing is a far less prominent in many peoples lives than it used to be. You are less likely to be in manufacturing or have a mate or their dad in manufacturing than you used to.

If you take the long view china are trying to shift to consumer economy and be less export led, India will follow etc. and they will be less able to compete with us on cost meaning that manufacturing could reshore back to western countries and of those western countries how well placed does the uk want to make itself compared to germany or USA etc.

Are we? Or is that just some made up crap.

So, let’s see the last piece of furniture/item of clothing you made. Or indeed, the last piece of anything you made yourself.

I think many of you are spectacularly missing the point here. Which is that we have gone from being a nation of producers, to a nation of consumers. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do other things as well, just that we should perhaps re-engage with the things we, as a nation, used to be really good at. Using some relatively very small industries as examples of why things are wonderful is disingenuous. Using Aston Martin as an example ignores the hundreds of vehicle manufacturers this country used to have. Where have they all gone?

This isn’t a discussion about the economy, it’s about disappearing skills. UK is the 8th largest manufacturer globally? It was once the biggest. And it was 6th just 20 years ago. And it’s likely to slip out of the top 10 in the next 15 or so.

Loads, just look at the official statistics

I’m looking at the reality, not ‘statistics’. Again, how much stuff that you currently have around you, is made here? The desk you’re sitting at, the chair you’re sitting on. The reality is, that less and less of the stuff we actually use in our lives, is made here in the UK. That’s a fact.

What we still do here is the complex stuff that also needs a lot of engineering in the first place and expertise to manufacture or at least assemble. And then to maintain if we’re going to talk about higher tech stuff.

Other nations are catching up and overtaking us. We won’t be doing this for much longer, without a serious re-think about how we actually develop those skills necessarily. It’s all well and good saying ‘oh but we’re really really good at making very low-volume specialist stuff’, but if we lose the skills to make the simple things, then we won’t have a foundation from which to learn the more complex stuff.

We used to make bicycles. Lots and lots of bicycles. We don’t any more. Now, China makes lots and lots of bicycles. And we buy those bicycles from them. And that money helps them to invest in making better and better bicycles.

Getting it yet?

our company is a uk manufacturer, we try to buy from other uk manufacturers. We sell here and all over the world. I’m not bothered who owns uk companies as long as there staff are being paid and paying tax in the uk. We also try and avoid companies that don’t see the need to pay taxes in the uk. Our start point is always uk first as we want those taxes paid and those hospitals open and my friends and neighbours in work. It does not mean that we don’t purchase from outside the uk but its local first for us.

Using Aston Martin as an example ignores the hundreds of vehicle manufacturers this country used to have. Where have they all gone?

Swindon, Sunderland and Coventry.

So, let’s see the last piece of furniture/item of clothing you made. Or indeed, the last piece of anything you made yourself.

Not my trade but let’s look back the the things I last repaired.

Lights switch, daughter’s bike, PS4 controller, Log burner, a friend’s daughter’s iPad. I could go on.

I could do things I’ve repaired in my trade but it’s not manufacturing so doesn’t count.

OP – go and ask Cy at Cotic why he gets his frames made in Taiwan and you’ll get your answer from a real-life, UK-owned and UK-based (and presumably UK tax-paying) company dealing in the realities of the relative costs of manufacturing in UK vs Taiwan and the prices we UK consumers are prepared to pay…

I agree it may be preferable for many reasons to buy UK-made kit but there’s stark realities that the people running these organisations have to make if they want to survive and continue to create jobs in the UK – especially when UK consumer is skint and trying to save money…

I’m looking at the reality, not ‘statistics’

😆

I’m looking at the reality, not ‘statistics’.

erm, maths is a strong foundation for a manufacturing economy, that could be your answer just there. 😆

Using Aston Martin as an example ignores the hundreds of vehicle manufacturers this country used to have. Where have they all gone?

AC (1908–present)
Arash (2006–present) [1]
Ariel (1999–present)
Ascari (1995–present)
Aston Martin (1921–present)
B
Bentley (1919–present)
BAC (2009–present)
Bristol (1946–present)[2]
Brooke (1991–present)
Bowler Offroad (1985-present)
C
Caparo (2006–present)
Caterham (1973–present)
Connaught (2004–present)
D
David Brown (2013–present)
G
Ginetta (1957–present)
Grinnall (1993–present)
J
Jaguar (1945–present)
JBA (1982–present)
JZR (1989–1998; 2000–present)
Javan (2006–present)
L
Land Rover (1948–present)
Lister (1954–1959; 1986–2006; 2013–)
Lotus (1951–present)
M
McLaren (1969–1970; 1993–1998; 2005–Present)
MG (1924–present) [3]
Mini (1959–present)[4]
MK (1996–present)
Morgan (1910–present)
N
Noble (1998–present)
P
Prodrive (1984–present)
R
Radical (1997–present)
Rolls-Royce (1904–present)
Ronart [1984–present)
S
Suffolk Jaguar (1990–present)
T
Triking (1978–present)
TVR (1954–present)
U
Ultima (1992–present)
V
Vauxhall (1903–present)[5]
W
Westfield (1982–present)

We could make bike components exclusively here but they’d cost a load more and make a standard bike a load more expensive. Other than an (arguably) misplaced sense of patriotism, why would you do that?

Well, because it would be helping invest in the development of British industry. And if others saw that one company was doing well, maybe they’d set up in competition, helping drive that industry forwards. Which could then employ and train more people. Who would then become skilled themselves, and maybe go on to do their own things. And hopefully become successful. And employ and train other people etc etc etc.

For 20 years we have as a country fetishised business and financial services above ‘the real economy’ when its arguable if it is socially useful

manufacturing keeps getting more and more productive so it employs less and less people for the same output which means that manufacturing is a far less prominent in many peoples lives than it used to be. You are less likely to be in manufacturing or have a mate or their dad in manufacturing than you used to.

If you take the long view china are trying to shift to consumer economy and be less export led, India will follow etc. and they will be less able to compete with us on cost meaning that manufacturing could reshore back to western countries and of those western countries how well placed does the uk want to make itself compared to germany or USA etc.

Well said. Interesting how Germany is still a manufacturer of high-quality tools, when our toolmaking industry has all but disappeared.

AC (1908–present)
Arash (2006–present) [1]
Ariel (1999–present)
Ascari (1995–present)
Aston Martin (1921–present)
B….

So where are all the others? The hundreds of others? And all the thousands of industries associated with those hundreds of manufacturers? And of those, ones like Jaguar, Land Rover, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Aston etc would have probably gone under if it wasn’t for foreign investment. How long before those parent companies decide UK labour is to expensive, and move operations elsewhere?

erm, maths is a strong foundation for a manufacturing economy, that could be your answer just there.

Erm, manufacturing is a strong foundation for a manufacturing industry. And sales figures are not a good means of assessing manufacturing, due to something called inflation. 😉

I like this thread.

bartyp – Member

This isn’t a discussion about the economy, it’s about disappearing skills. UK is the 8th largest manufacturer globally? It was once the biggest. And it was 6th just 20 years ago. And it’s likely to slip out of the top 10 in the next 15 or so.

Yes, we’ve been overtaken by larger countries which we had a head start on. This is completely inevitable. How do you plan to have us continue to out-produce Brazil, which has 3 times the population and about 38 times the land mass? Annexe some other countries? Bomb them back out of the industrial age? There’s nothing magical about Britain that means we can continually outproduce bigger nations. But we remember what put us ahead, and it wasn’t mass producing commodities that other countries could do cheaper- it was R&D. When Britain was the workshop of the world, at the front of mass production, it was because that was the state of the art, our industrial sector was competing against essentially cottege industries. The success wasn’t the things we produced but the engine we’d invented that produced it

The UK has hit fantastically above its weight in the past and people act like it’s a problem that this is unsustainable, or somehow a failure. We’re the 22nd biggest country in the world by population, we’re still hitting massively above our weight, and still growing. (the year immediately before the recession was a record year for manufacturing in the UK).

I’m looking at the reality, not ‘statistics’.

On the basis that you have not been to visit every UK manufacturer, you have absolutely no concept of reality, you are basing your views on a romanticised nirvana in the past that never existed. A place where people were exploited, died young, and had no free time. You might want to go back there but you won’t find many fellow travellers.

We used to make bicycles. Lots and lots of bicycles. We don’t any more. Now, China makes lots and lots of bicycles. And we buy those bicycles from them. And that money helps them to invest in making better and better bicycles

But unless British manufacturers can get their prices down to those of the far east, who is going to buy those expensive bikes? The majority of bike sales by both revenue and volume are at the low end of the market. The higher end bikes are on the up but Dave down the road who wants to ride to work 5 miles away is never going to spend 1k or higher on a UK made frame so unless the UK manufacturing can get the price down to those of the cheaper Asian made bikes, it’s a no-win situation. What the UK bike industry is left with is hand made frames.

For 20 years we have as a country fetishised business and financial services above ‘the real economy’ when its arguable if it is socially useful

Since when was ANY business run to be socially useful. The factories were only ever about making money for the same sort of people who still make money from running businesses now.

But unless British manufacturers can get their prices down to those of the far east, who is going to buy those expensive bikes?

Brompton is a premium product, which is expanding very successfully into China and other newly emerging economies.

There is now a huge global middle class which didn’t exist 30 years ago, and they want premium, Made-in-Britain products.

So, let’s see the last piece of furniture/item of clothing you made. Or indeed, the last piece of anything you made yourself.

You can’t.
Unless you want to travel to China, to the OLED manufacturing plant churning out OLEDs by the billion, using machines designed and manufactured in the UK.
Manufactured in the UK because no-one else had the expertise needed.

Or next time you’re fiddling with your smartphone you could google whereabouts the satellite is that it relies on for many of its functions.
You can thank me for making the relevent components that you undoubtedly use whenever you like.

Just two examples and I could easily go on, Formula 1 for example.

There is very little high quality engineering and manufacturing left in this country.

Utter horse shit.
That’s exactly what we have left.

We’re generally pretty useless at most things.

Stop talking out of your Botham.

You might not have a clue about manufacturing (I say might, recent threads remove pretty much all doubt) but there are plenty of people in this country who do.

Now no more of this nonsense.
Must dash, I need to meet the missus for a late lunch. I will admit that she is an import, but we can’t have the monopoly on everything now, can we? 🙂

Brompton is an anomaly; a UK bike manufacturer which is actually growing rapidly. Great design, and very successful marketing. However; most of the bits are actually made abroad. Including the Sturmey Archer hubs. Sturmey Archer, I wonder what happened to them…

What happens when Brompton decide to move production to somewhere with cheaper labour costs?

There is now a huge global middle class which didn’t exist 30 years ago, and they want premium, Made-in-Britain products.

I thik this is quite mythical; ‘Made in Britain’ doesn’t have the same kudos it once did. Chiefly because we don’t make as much stuff, and our skills base is disappearing, along with our reputation. 🙁

I’ll bet you it really isn’t all that big.

And they want some Made in Britain products. The ones with Heritage. That will always be a limited market.

thik this is quite mythical; ‘Made in Britain’ doesn’t have the same kudos it once did.

The Kudos I recall was that it was shit.

Really? Man you are out of touch. The export of UK skills is a massive industry in itself.

Unless you mean thread deburrers and casting fettlers. They’ve all been offshored. As it’s not particularly skillful.

Regarding the growth of the global middle class, was a report published on the emerging Chinese G2 generation – a huge baby-boomer type generation, people now in their 20s and 30s.

They have plenty of money and one of their buying characteristics is to have Western made products, from independent companies.

Here is a quote from the report:

McKinsey research has shown that this generation of Chinese consumers is the most Westernized to date. Prone to regard expensive products as intrinsically better than less expensive ones, they are happy to try new things, such as personal digital gadgetry. They are also more likely than previous generations to check the Internet for other people’s usage experiences or comments. These consumers seek emotional satisfaction through better taste or higher status, are loyal to the brands they trust, and prefer niche over mass brands (Exhibit 2). Teenage members of this cohort already have a big influence on decisions about family purchases, according to our research.

The Kudos I recall was that it was shit.

Basically. The whole 70s/80s “Buy British” campaign was to try and dissuade people from buying better made German goods and buy inferior British ones instead.

I thik this is quite mythical; ‘Made in Britain’ doesn’t have the same kudos it once did. Chiefly because we don’t make as much stuff, and our skills base is disappearing, along with our reputation.

I have twigged, this is a scientific experiment to try and determine how many times a line of bullshit has to be repeated before people started to believe it. However, it has not been set up at all well so the data will be useless.

You can’t.

I’m sitting at a desk I made myself. On a chair I made myself. Made using skills I’ve largely taught myself, because I think it’s crap that nobody knows how to do stuff any more. And I don’t want to be someone who can’t do anything but push keys on a keyboard, moaning about how crap everything is because it’s not made very well.

That’s exactly what we have left.

We have relatively very little of it left. Wake up and smell the coffee. Just because you and a relative handful of others do particular things in a relatively very smal manufacturing industry, does not mean we are a nation of manufacturers.

Anyone want some statistics?

And regarding the Made in Britain status, research has been conducted into this and also confirmed it is highly valued internationally.
Source.

That’s the era I recall and bartyp wonders why we lost some car manufacturers.

And I don’t want to be someone who can’t do anything but push keys on a keyboard, moaning about how crap everything is because it’s not made very well.

Too late.

On the basis that you have not been to visit every UK manufacturer, you have absolutely no concept of reality, you are basing your views on a romanticised nirvana in the past that never existed.

The ‘reality’ is, that when I was a kid, far more things that we all used were made here. From the cheapest to the very expensive. Clothes, furniture, tools, and bicycles.

Those statistics above prove our manufacturing industry is shrinking. Unbelievable that so many on here are in obvious denial of the facts. Our skills base is evaporating. People are less and less able to make and fix stuff. Less decent stuff is made here. You simply can’t argue with that. Saying ‘oh but we’re really good at F1 or this or that’ is just burying your head in the sand.

The export of UK skills is a massive industry in itself.

So, skilled people are going abroad to find work, because there’s less opportunities here. Great.

Ahem: OP you said earlier you were more interested in ‘reality’ than statistics and then, to back up your view, posted up two sets of data published by the UK Office for National Statistics!

I think your basic premise that the UK making fewer things is BAD is faulty – it’s subjective, and that’s why people are pushing back.

Our competitive advantage is changing – globalisation means we have to adapt our relative advantages if we want to stay a rich country and you seem to be advocating that we resist change rather than adapt. Darwin would suggest that’s a daft strategy.

Seriously, go and email Cy and ask him why he manufactures in Taiwan and hear it from a successful UK business who has real-life choices and real-life decisions to make…

Ahem: OP you said earlier you were more interested in ‘reality’ than statistics and then posted up two sets of data published by the UK Office for National Statistics!

To satisfy those who can’t seem to see beyond mere numbers. And also as a reinforcement to the fact that less stuff is being made here. I thought that if I gave them some actual figures, they’d soon have to rethink things. 😆

But if you can’t see the reality that we’re becoming less and less skilled in making stuff, then man, you really are blinkered.

Too late.

Good point. I’m off to make some stuff. 😉

Anyone want some statistics?

Those are relative statistics – not absolute – services have grown faster than manufacturing as they have in every developed nation, including Germany. Productivity advances are far greater in manufacturing than services. This was all said on the first page, you are not telling us anything we don’t know. However, we are able to draw the correct conclusions.

The ‘reality’ is, that when I was a kid, far more things that we all used were made here

A lot of the lost jobs were fairly low skill stuff (always the bulk by volume) and with Globalisation you’d expect the number to decrease if you’re a relatively rich country.

Can’t say I’d want to be working in a Chinese assembly line doing 14 hr shifts with suicide nets outside the windows to keep the death toll down.

Does this belong in the ‘bullshit which becomes true through repetition’ thread?
[/quote]

Along with “Germans do automotive engineering better”. Remind me again where the Mercedes F1 team is based?

So to take a step back bartyp, what are you actually proposing? That UK companies should just make stuff here in the hope that people will buy them despite being much more expensive so that we can retain skills on the simple/volume stuff (because typically that’s what’s gone offshore)?

Along with “Germans do automotive engineering better”. Remind me again where the Mercedes F1 team is based?

Remind me who makes better cars? Remind me who has the bigger automotive industry?

But if you can’t see the reality that we’re becoming less and less skilled in making stuff, then man, you really are blinkered.

Who cares if we’re less skilled at making stuff? It’s not the only way to run an economy…

Oh, as well as Cotic, go and do some research into ARM, considered to be market dominant in the field of processors for mobile phones and tablets
Wikipedia

We’re still dominant and world class, just in other sectors these days…

We have relatively very little of it left. Wake up and smell the coffee. Just because you and a relative handful of others do particular things in a relatively very small manufacturing industry, does not mean we are a nation of manufacturers.

We longer make simple stuff that can be made cheaper elsewhere, I’m not arguing against that.
What I’m arguing against is what I’ve quoted you on above.

Your graphs do not address this.

I’m not an expert on all areas of manufacturing, but on a positive note, as China’s economy grows, and with it working conditions and wages are getting better and better, UK companies are looking at bringing manufacturing back.
I know of several companies looking to restart manufacture of fireworks in the UK as China’s prices rise.

As an aside, where in the world will you find one of the leading experts in this field?
You’ll find him pottering about in his shed, playing with chemicals not half an hour from where I am now in Cambridgeshire, unless he’s giving sermon.

I agree, it’s important. And yet I still don’t want to spend £1500 on steel hardtail frame, I may as well just join ISIS.

BartyP you really need to go and learn some basic economic theory. You wouldn’t entertain a discussion with people about your bonkers custom bike frame unless they had experience of making bicycles to your liking from Ti tubing themselves. So I’m not sure why you’re expecting others to indulge you in macro economics when quite clearly you don’t get it. At all.

wrecker – Member

Remind me who makes better cars? Remind me who has the bigger automotive industry?

Unfortunately just as we started to make really good cars, the Germans bought them, stole the tech and then shut them down.

Bastards! 😆

As for better, the cars we make in the UK are far more reliable than those made in Germany, last time I checked.
In fact Hondas made in Swindon were about as good as you’d get, Worldwide.

So reading is another skill you are useless at 🙄 The export of the skills, not the people is a massive industry.

And TBH, the UK hi tech industry, as opposed to iron foundries and bolting together substandard cars, is (relatively) booming. Or at least it’s profitable.