Editor's comment for June 2022

I recently chatted to Andrea Wilson at Hone-All regarding ‘Honing and Deep Hole Drilling’ content for this issue, but as regular users of LinkedIn connected to Andrea will testify, she’s also been pretty busy launching a campaign to convince government to appoint a dedicated Manufacturing Minister. But let’s rewind a bit.

When I first visited Andrea at the Hone-All site in Leighton Buzzard about 10 years ago, we talked about this. Vince Cable at the time was Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and although he was doing a reasonable job if I remember correctly, Andrea mentioned that what we really need is a dedicated person at government level looking after the interests and needs of manufacturing companies and SMEs.

Now we can fast forward. During lockdown, Andrea, as I think we all did, noted how companies collaborated harmoniously to help each other. It’s probably a bit of a stretch to label this as a positive aspect of the pandemic, but it did bring the industry together. VentilatorChallenge UK was a prime example. Businesses just wanted to help in some way. It was a time of collaboration rather than competition.

Andrea also noticed during this time that while funding, support and help was available for manufacturers, trying to access it or even get information was an absolute minefield. Her passion to appoint a government minister or at least someone in a position of authority who could fight the corner for manufacturing companies large and small suddenly took on new levels of significance. Andrea put out a LinkedIn poll and 96% of respondents agreed.

So with renewed enthusiasm and determination, she, and a small band of like-minded individuals launched a new campaign – Support UK Manufacturing (SUM). In an ideal world, the primary objective here is to ‘persuade’ the government to appoint a dedicated minister to look after the interests of SMEs and manufacturers. In practical terms, the appointment of a manufacturing Tsar or similar is probably more realistic.

Whatever the job title the sentiment is the same: to help, support and nurture UK manufacturing companies and their respective supply chains. As the SUM website states: ‘Manufacturing is at the heart of economic growth, and with returned optimism needs renewed encouragement and recognition from the UK Government.’

Campaigns need 10,000 signatures to be formally raised in parliament so that’s the goal here folks. It’ll need a monumental push to get it over the line so I would urge anyone who hasn’t done so already, to go to the SUM website and sign the petition.

Apart from the fact it’s the most worthiest of causes for the manufacturing community, surely it’s the least we can do for the monumental efforts Andrea and the team have put in just to get this far.

Here’s where you need to go: www.supportukmanufacturing.co.uk