UK manufacturing is coming home – Telegraph.co.uk

These revealing scenes are played out in The Town Taking on China, a
BBC Two documentary that follows the £20m-turnover company’s attempts to
deal with the problem by choosing Xiao’s latter option – the highway.
Caldeira wants to bring manufacturing home to its Kirkby factory.

With 2.65m people unemployed in the UK and the economy still vulnerable to a
reliance on financial services, “repatriation” of manufacturing
sounds an attractive concept. But can UK workers compete with their Chinese
counterparts on cost, skills and commitment?

The early signs were not encouraging for Caldeira, who began his hunt for
staff at the jobcentre. Ponderous sewers prove a drag on orders, warehouse
workers call in sick. Three weeks in to his plan, four of the 17 staff he’s
hired have left – for a better-paid job in a call centre in at least one
instance. “We really struggled with machinists – it’s a skilled job to
do that accurately and quickly all day,” Caldeira says. “In the
past we’ve always been able to get experienced machinists from other
factories closing. Now it’s a new generation and they don’t have the skills.”

The jobs Caldeira is creating don’t pay much more than minimum wage, so the
focus is inevitably on youngsters or the unemployed. This has provided an
illuminating “snapshot of Britain”, he says. “Half of the
young people we’ve taken on are just glad to have some work and build a
career. The other half don’t want to know.”

Caldeira is undeterred, however, and believes investing in training willing
young people will eventually pay off.

Emma Bridgewater, who has been manufacturing pottery and textiles in Stoke for
27 years, says she’s got the proof that a “quixotic” faith in UK
manufacturing needn’t end in disaster. When her manufacturing partner went
bust in the early 1990s, she resisted calls to follow the Eastern tide and
bought the assets.

“People told me I was cuckoo. At times it’s been ghastly, but also
worthwhile,” she says. Now she’s hoping more companies that moved
offshore will start to follow Caldeira home. “I’m constantly astonished
more people aren’t doing what Tony is.”

Having built a manufacturing operation while counterparts were either dying or
leaving home, she insists the right workers can be found – if bosses are
willing to be patient and not believe the “myth” that it’s too
hard to hire and fire staff in the UK.

“The staff are often not madly enthusiastic at first. There’s a
scepticism which is often born of years of very bad treatment. But people do
want to work.

“We hire and fire a bit – if we have to we can adjust our capacity quite
sharply. Get a good lawyer and you can get rid of people if you have to.”

Bridgewater admits a long-term view is required – she insists her eponymous
£14m turnover company is not for sale, partly because a buyer might sell the
factory – “a quick, easy bit of asset stripping”.

She is also sympathetic to the frustration shown by Caldeira’s right-hand man
Malcolm Smith in the documentary – which concludes on Tuesday – when new
recruits slow down production. “You can’t afford a long unproductive
training period, it’s a big problem – tax breaks to encourage training would
help. But there are plenty of opportunities and companies are mystifyingly
bad at getting on with it,” she says.

Caldeira believes UK manufacturers who are still standing could be approaching
a watershed moment. “With labour costs, duty, shipping costs and fuel
prices on one side and shorter lead times, speaking the same language,
smaller order quantities [on the other], when the call becomes marginal, my
instinct is to bring it home,” he says.

“If you’ve survived the first wave of globalisation, you’ll be more
competitive now. It’s not a one-way bet anymore. I won’t be the only one
doing this. The tide has turned.”