Why is plastics manufacturing coming back to the UK?

After years of Britain’s plastics being mostly manufactured in China, it is finally returning home to the UK. How come after years of this business being dominated by the Far East, why is it moving back? Here are a few reasons:

More Flexibility in Order Sizes

As most companies who use plastics will know, not every order is massive, maybe for the multi-million pound companies it is, but not for the average business. This makes importing from the Far East more difficult because they work better with a large period of notice and a bulk order. They don’t work well with small orders that are all very different products.

Manufacturing in the UK gives you this flexibility and quick turn around that smaller businesses desire. You can send changes easily but also there is less of a wait between when you send a brief to when you receive a product because it isn’t travelling across the world and you can contact each other with ease.

Reduces Your Business’ Carbon Footprint

As a country we are becoming more aware of the damage that is being done to the planet and more educated in what we can do to help prevent this continuing. Shipping plastics across the world uses a lot of energy and also creates a lot of waste. Companies are looking to UK manufacturers to help reduce the energy that is needed, shipping across the UK uses a lot less energy than shipping to the Far East does. UK manufacturer’s recycle all spare parts so nothing is wasted in the production process.

Quality Control

Although manufacturing in the Far East may seem like a smart idea economically, it has its drawbacks. There has been a bit of an issue with quality from manufacturing in the Far East, this is not in every case but there are many them. As a business it is much harder to do the checks that you may want to do, it would be difficult to visit their factory to see their workforce and their equipment and if there was an issue how easy would it be to resolve?

UK manufacturing can alleviate this risk from your mind, it would be much easier to visit the factory to check they are capable of what you want. Any issues can be handled over the phone or even face to face much easier then you could ever do in the Far East. Again, not in all cases but most manufacturing that is completed in the UK is to a much higher standard than in the Far East because of the slightly higher cost it brings for labour and materials.

The end of 2017 and the start of this year has already seen large investments being made to the UK market as UK manufacturers are starting to capture their share in this growing global market through investment and through innovation. It looks like the only way is up for the UK plastics industry.