Manufacturing: a new focus for entrepreneurs

by Stuart Rock - Tuesday, 9th September 2008 - - Business comment

BERR announces its manufacturing strategy review. Anything new in it?

The Department for Business & Enterprise has just launched its new Manufacturing Strategy Review (it's one reason why the Cabinet held its much-publicised meeting in Birmingham.)

It's long on analysis and I'll have to wade through it.

But here are the good news headlines. The UK is the world’s sixth largest manufacturer measured by output. In 2006, 25 per cent of U goods exports were - and here you make this mean what you want it to mean - "high-tech." (The BERR paper says that this compares to 22 per cent in the USA, 15 per cent in France and 11 per cent in Germany.)

The UK attracts high levels of inward foreign direct investment to manufacturing, and is second globally only to the USA.

But of course, we knew that already. We have already been saying that manufacturing has been an untrumpeted success story of British business (see our major survey on the new manufacturers).

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