British Made For Quality (BMFQ) is the campaign to keep manufacturing in Britain. Never has this mission been more important, as the United Kingdom rises to the challenge of rebuilding the nation’s industrial base in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and, following Brexit, as a newly-independent state. 

BMFQ is a voice for British manufacturing and engineering businesses run and managed on a purely voluntary basis with no outside funding.

Our aim is to see the active promotion of free enterprise by the nation’s government and local authorities, and the development of training, education and apprenticeships – so that our industries can regenerate and survive in these challenging times.

Our trademark BMFQ logo is a badge of honour which is used by many companies that have signed up to our cause and which meet our criteria. But we also have many individual supporters who support our aims and who choose to join us as ordinary members in order to assist our work.

If you agree with our aims, please show your support for BMFQ. We are a flexible and open organisation, keen to work with everyone who shares our mission to keep manufacturing in Britain.

Please join us by clicking the red box at the top right of this page  -thank you.

CHINA AND THE CASE FOR ‘NEAR-SHORING’

There has been very little in the media about the increase in “near-shoring” in Europe and North America following the belated realisation that trying to source everything in China was bound to end in disaster (which is now clearly the case with anyone needing components, especially items such as PCBs). The old adage that “you can always find someone to make things cheaper – and worse“ still applies; yet there was a great exit of manufacturing from the UK in the late 1990s and early 2000s as “offshoring” was encouraged by everyone from government downwards. Those businesses who did not send manufacturing to Asia were often castigated.

As Chairman of BMFQ (British Made for Quality) – the Campaign to Keep Manufacturing in Britain – and during an interview on BBC Radio 20 years ago I was accused by the other contributors to the programme of being “out of touch” – and was accused of trying to “bring back the corn laws” for daring to suggest that we ought to protect British manufacturing by investing in it, and that the policy of sending everything to China was going to come back to haunt us. Those opposing me on the radio programme included senior representatives from banking, financial services and the CBI. The statement was made that: “Manufacturing is something for the Third World to undertake, we only need ‘added value’ service sector jobs.” When, subsequently, BMFQ asked for support from the Government (Labour at the time) we received an email from a senior civil servant suggesting that promoting British-made products would be “against EU law”. Instead he suggested we seek legal advice!

The current situation in China is that raw material prices have rocketed – far more than they have in Europe and the Western World. In addition, there is a big labour shortage in the industrialised east of China because not so many young people want to move there to work in the factories, far away from their homes and families, especially those with children. There is also more work in the west of China, which has benefited from Chinese government investment. The net result is big labour shortages for the factories, leading to very extended lead times on production.

In addition to those problems there has also been a big increase in demand for all sorts of products following lockdown. The financial handouts by the Biden Administration in the US have also created extra demand. I know of Chinese factories where the lead time has gone from 30 days to 6 months or more. Even if you can get your production made, you cannot ship it. The cost of a 40’HC container has gone from around $1750 to ship from China to the UK, to up to $20,000 if you want your goods shipped within 2 weeks or $16,000 to $17,000 if you are prepared to wait 4 weeks.

PCBs are in virtually every device now used and there is a huge shortage. The US government has a plan to bring 50% of production back to the US, the EU have also determined the same and Bosch have announced that they are building a plant. Meanwhile, production lines are at a standstill waiting for components from China and finally the penny has dropped with all these “business advisers” that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all to export all the jobs to Asia, close down the factories and lose all the expertise in manufacturing components.

There is now, at last, a big movement in America and Europe for “near-shoring” as opposed to offshoring, and I believe it is something that needs to secure the support of the UK government, banks, CBI, financial institutions and anyone else who can help to bring manufacturing back. We need to “take back control”, as the saying goes! The fact that we had virtually no PPE manufacturers in the UK when the pandemic hit, and that we could not get any initially from China either, should have been a very big warning sign to everyone.

We cannot afford to miss this opportunity to bring manufacturing jobs back to Britain!

 Julian Baseley

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