The news on p30 of SignLink October that Wilson Process Systems (WPS) has made a £500,000 capital investment into the UK’s first assembly line that can create LED boards up to 1.3m long and compete with imports from emerging markets on price is an important development for the sign industry. It is also one that perhaps provides a pinprick of light for British manufacturing when looked at in light of the fact that, not only is our economy staggering back to its feet, but the rocket-like ascendency of emerging-markets seem to have curved their trajectory.

Indeed, China looks set to struggle in achieving its target of 7.5 percent growth in 2013, a far cry from the double digit figures that became the norm for the first ten years of the decade. Figures of 5 percent for India and only 2.5 percent for Brazil and Russia are also a little less than half what they were during boom years that saw developed economies slip into sustained year-on-year decline.

These figures and individual examples, such as WPS, provide some grounding for a long-held hope that British-made components may once again form the bedrock of products manufactured by industries such as our own. This idea would have seemed like pure fantasy only a handful of years ago, as it was cheaper to import LED systems and materials from Beijing than it was to buy them from a supplier across the road.  Yet the idea of a British manufacturing base is only realistic if there are a thousand more like WPS out there that invest to take on low-cost foreign competitors. The reality is that tens of thousands of businesses, including those in our own neck of the woods, only survive because of ultra low-cost products manufactured in emerging economies—as they keep production costs low and allow sign-makers, and their suppliers, to sustain an arms race in a price-focussed product battle.

Where ever you come down on in this debate, one clear fact is that new manufacturing technology is causing ripples in once calm waters.
eee