Many years ago I noticed that while most of the country was focused on GDP etc the growth or otherwise of the manufacturing company where I was marketing manager did not follow the same trends – or so I thought until a few years had gone by when it became apparent that our B2B industry was out of phase with the rest of the country who were only looking at B2C.
The difference could be one or two years – and yet we had to work with an economic environment created for the benefit of the highstreet. the result was that each time round the economic cycle manufacturing industry pulled the rest of the country out of its problems, and it looks like we will have to do it again.
Issues over Brexit have further muddied the waters on this so I am indebted to Mark Simms of MachineBuilding.Net for the following insight:-
“Two interesting pieces of data in the last few days contrast the UK’s GDP with its manufacturing base. While we have slipped a position to sixth in the global league table of GDPs, being overtaken by India, the UK’s manufacturing sector has climbed one place to eighth in the world rankings, overtaking France. This surely highlights the importance of our sector, and Make UK asserts that if the Government commits to its call for a manufacturing target of 15% of GDP, then the sector could aim to match seventh ranked Italy. But yet again it’s all going to come down to how much the Government really values our sector, because it’s going to need more than just lip service.”
