It has been announced that UK manufacturers, fearing the disruption which Brexit could cause, have started rebuilding stockpiles ahead of the latest deadline on 31^st October.

Rafi Billurcu, Partner, Manufacturing at Infosys Consulting, made the following comment :

“With the Brexit deadline fast approaching, there is increasing uncertainty amongst UK organisations about the effect this will have from a pricing, lead time and availability perspective. Subsequently, we’re seeing the upcoming trend of stockpiling, which makes sense in the short term.

 However, in the long term – deal or no deal – organisations have a more strategic role to play in identifying and supporting the supplier base in the UK to become better, deliver faster and provide quality raw materials to fuel their manufacturing businesses. This will require significant efforts from the organisations, hence a need to start exploring this direction as soon as possible.

 Ultimately, UK manufacturing needs to be supported by more and more local suppliers considering the long lead times of supplying from China and potential tariffs and charges from the EU. Therefore now more than ever is the right time to invest in smart manufacturing such as Industry 4.0, 3D printing and other digital technologies, in order to ensure UK manufacturing is ready to compete with the world. This is becoming more and more prominent given the industry’s current shift from B2B to B2C models and even B2B2C, where organisations are building additional capabilities to enhance their customer offering through different kinds of innovative services and lot size one concept. With this new pressure to deliver such a wide variety of products comes the need for manufacturers to build an extended ecosystem of partners.”