In business studies, we are used to reading about UK firms being tempted by overseas investment projects, lured by famously cheap labour in an attempt to drive down unit costs. This goes some way to explain why manufacturing now only accounts for about one-tenth of the UK’s GDP, half of what it was 10 years ago.
James Dyson knows this all too well. In 2002, he moved his manufacturing operations to Malaysia and he has no plans to make any vacuum cleaners in the UK again. ‘We make consumer electronics and this is where all the suppliers for those components exist. Those suppliers do not exist in Britain’, he says. Many firms are left with no choice but to relocate abroad in order to gain access to a supply network that is difficult to find at home, especially as many will operate just-in-time deals with their suppliers.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
