Companies begin moving production back to UK

Manufacturers increasingly are moving production back to Britain as shoddy quality and higher freight prices are undermining the cost advantage of producing goods overseas.

A report into the state of the manufacturing sector by the EEF and BDO, the accountants, finds that one in seven companies surveyed had moved production back to the UK from abroad in the past two years

Many British manufacturers have outsourced production to countries with lower labour costs, in Eastern Europe or Asia, in the past decade, a trend that has accelerated as an increasing number of British companies have fallen into foreign ownership.

But higher freight, energy and commodity costs have increased the expense of production overseas, while the recession has put pressure on companies to re-evaluate decisions on location.

Times of London