I recently saw a topic on UKC on complaining about out source production to the far east to help keep the price, down and someone asking whether there was a manufacturer that still made harnesses in this country. I found this a little odd, as whilst I would love to buy British, I am totally aware that this is becoming increasingly harder to do, as more and more companies are forced to ‘Out Source’ production to stay competitive.
It therefore seemed ironic that after the commercial pressure forced the production over seas that we are now worrying that not enough is being manufactured in the western world. Imagine how much a harness would cost if the factory manufacturing them was in London! Any manufacturing left in the UK is typically in areas that are suitably deprived so as to keep the wages lower than if they were in more economically vibrant areas.
Until the entry of a few of the poorer eastern European countries to the EU, Wales was an objective 1 funding area. This basically means it is the bottom percentage of local economies in the EU, and as such got a extra social funding and subsidies to keep and encourage manufacturers to stay or relocate to the area. This funding has dried up and many companies have been forced elsewhere in search of lower overheads.
Despite this one company remains as locally based as it can be, DMM designs and manufacturers climbing hardware in its Llanberis factory. One of the reasons it can still do this is probably due to the lower wages that are on offer throughout the area. The average wage in Gwynedd in 2006 was £15900, compared to £18000 across the rest of Wales, and over £20000 for the whole of the UK.
What DMM offer and maintain to this day is a state of the art manufacturing solutions for hot forged aluminium, so much so that they even manufacture other people carabiners in house. They are probably the biggest employer within the llanberis, after EuroDPC, although most workers at this drug manufacturing company seem to turn away from the hills and head to the coast.
Before we complain about sending manufacturing overseas perhaps we should look at why it happened, and the answer is that we as consumers were unwilling to spend what it would cost to manufacturer stuff in this country. To give you an idea as to the complexity of manufacturing a ‘simple’ carabiner. I have uploaded a video factory tour I shot for DMM a while back.
The Secret Life of Krabs from mark reeves on Vimeo.