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Does anyone manufacture anything?

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silvermusic

Just curious after a long Chirstmas lunch and much putting the world to right's this afternoon chatting with relations. Does anyone on here actually manufacture anything nowadays? I see plenty of e-commerce sites, service industry, finance business's and the like on here but no one seems to manuafcture anything.

Oh well, back to the mince pies and booze, Happy Christmas. :)
 
I outsource the manufacturing of the card games I make. But they are based in the UK. A dying trade sure, but the best card games manufacturers for me are based in London. Used to do it in India..not as good as the London manufacturers. Unfortunately they are now officially the only authentic British manufacturer of card games...the other one is Belgium based on Canvey Island ( who have incidently tried to poach my business from the former!)
 
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I undertake product design and just about everything is made in the UK by or for my customers. I deal with numerous machine shops and metal fabrication shops each having quite sophisticated machinery i.e. CNC multi axis machining centres or laser cutting machines etc. Then there are the rapid prototyping techniques used to get from a design to product in just days. A quick look on google for something like 'CNC milling' will provide loads of uk companies. They are all making something. Well, maybe not so much just of late but that's another story........

So, in conclusion, yes, there are a lot of real things being made out there. It's not all smoke and mirrors.

Les
 
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yes there is still a UK manufacturing arena and its fine..just a bit smaller these days.

i have a client who hand makes iron and general metal furniture and another who builds motorbikes and they are tootling along during this recession quite happily.

the big factories have gone but here in Whitby 2 70ft fishing boats are being built and the shipyard have built 20 odd decent size steel vessels for customers across the UK so all the talk of there being no manufacturing base at all is not true..its just a case of they are harder to find and work on smaller lines of production these days..the skills are still there though! just about :)
 
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The original point raises the question of how much manufacturing industry is there in the UK. Whilst a few people here do manufacture, the vast majority seem to be in the service industries which is true of the UK at large. This is ok if we can sell those services to other countries to pay for stuff they manufacture, but aren't we getting into a pickle if we only sell services to ourselves?
And worse than this, the public sector is huge and growing. As this is largely paid for out of the private sector being taxed it is unsustainable at the levels we have if the rest of the economy shrinks. Off the top of my head I remember figures something like manufacturing being 6% of GDP, and the public sector being 37%. Our economy would be a lot healthier if these figures were reversed.
Oh well, back to 53 ways to re-cook Turkey.
 
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Dawg said:
The original point raises the question of how much manufacturing industry is there in the UK. Whilst a few people here do manufacture, the vast majority seem to be in the service industries which is true of the UK at large. This is ok if we can sell those services to other countries to pay for stuff they manufacture, but aren't we getting into a pickle if we only sell services to ourselves?
And worse than this, the public sector is huge and growing. As this is largely paid for out of the private sector being taxed it is unsustainable at the levels we have if the rest of the economy shrinks. Off the top of my head I remember figures something like manufacturing being 6% of GDP, and the public sector being 37%. Our economy would be a lot healthier if these figures were reversed.
Oh well, back to 53 ways to re-cook Turkey.
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What you say is very true.A countries wealth was always its manufactured products .The systematic outsourcing of manufacturing to third world countries will surely leave us with nothing of real value.

Just wait till the Chinese are the supermarket of the world and decide to up there prices to western levels as did Japan,who were the first cheap source of manufactured goods.?:eek:

Earl
 
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sirearl said:
Just wait till the Chinese are the supermarket of the world and decide to up there prices to western levels as did Japan,who were the first cheap source of manufactured goods.?:eek:

Earl
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Then another country will come along (an African or South American country?) and take over the manufacturing of cheap products to fill western appetites (while we can still afford it) and China and India will move to Japanese levels of prosperity.

Barrie
 
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the UK government doesnt really understand the underlying basics of a healthy and vibrant economy...services are good..but you need a balance!

its simple, i always have to point this out to councillors and MPs who still don't grasp the concept:

its a conveyor belt...you start with the discovery of raw materials that are passed to the manufacturer to make in to a product which is sent to the sales floor to be sold by a customer services team :)

the UK is missing the manufacturing bit...we've got a whole rung of the ladder missing basically and thats why this country just doesn't work!

the manufacturing base is still there but its full potential is not being utilised
 
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We take hardware manufactured in Denmark and combine it with our software to make a completely new product. Does this count?
 
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Esk247 said:
its simple, i always have to point this out to councillors and MPs who still don't grasp the concept:
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Me too, and those pesky heads of state, Nobel laureates in economics and assorted Heads of Industry. Will they listen? Will they listen, hell.
 
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I run a small R&D company in the UK. We manage all the development work for our clients and then, in some cases, help them to get the manufacturing done overseas. (Sorry about that!) One project is a novel paintbrush (has a screwdriver attached so you can open the paint tin lid). We tried to get this manufactured in the UK but no paintbrushes are made here any more as far as we can tell. My client actually set up a cottage industry and bought paintbrushes at trade prices and then modified them but at such low volumes he couldn't make it pay. (a longer history can be read at: www workingmodel co uk and look at items for sale). We are planning to hedge our bets asitwere with a couple of projects involving electronics. That is we will do all R&D work in the Uk and get the components made in China but will do the final assembly and testing here in the Uk.
 
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wow what a genius idea a paint bruch with a screw driver on the end....no one thought of this yet, dam good idea.

With the health and beauty trade i think when / if new legislation etc comes in a lot of supplements will have to be made in this country to meet certain standards. Thats the way i sort of interpret it. We source vitamins manuafctured n this country but i think the raw materials they use come from abroad.
 
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busynessman said:
wow what a genius idea a paint bruch with a screw driver on the end....no one thought of this yet, dam good idea.

With the health and beauty trade i think when / if new legislation etc comes in a lot of supplements will have to be made in this country to meet certain standards. Thats the way i sort of interpret it. We source vitamins manuafctured n this country but i think the raw materials they use come from abroad.
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thats going to be a nightmare then! because with herbal medicines alot of it is sourced from plants in china/japan/india i would of thought...we have destroyed british wildlife..so there won't be many alternative remedies available if they change the legislation further! they simply need to keep a closer eye on it and people need to be less gullible and head to the local health food shop (NOT THE RETAIL CHAIN HERBAL SHOPS) the little tiny ones that operate on their own..they offer a wealth of remedies for colds and flu and you can't over dose on it either which is nice.
 
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hi Mike here , i am from china, if you want to learn chinese , i can teach, if you want to kown more about china , i can help.

and if i want to kown more about uk , who can help me , i want to be international trader , it is my dream , anyone can help me , pls pm me , thanks
 
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