Partnership for prosperity

"We outgrew our manufacturing capability, so we've decided that for the work we are unable to manufacture in the UK we will ask our Chinese suppliers to do it," says Managing Director Ben Cottam.

"We went to China for its manufacturing capability, as I think no matter what type of product we wanted, we can always find someone in China to do it. The cost of manufacturing in China is not high also."

About one third of Cottam Brush products are made in China, he says.

Cottam says his team works with a Chinese partner who helps to find the appropriate manufacturer for each type of product.

His UK team does the design, communicates the concept with the Chinese manufacturer and monitors their progress in making the first samples of product to ensure quality.

Most of the high-technology brushes that customers need in small quantity are still made in the UK, Cottam says, whereas mass production brushes can be made more efficiently in China.

Miller International Ltd of Northumberland is another manufacturer that has achieved success in China. Founded in 1978 as a welding and repair service for quarries, mines and open cast coal sites, the company has grown over the years to become a global business.

Today the company makes a wide range of products including quick-hitch couplers, hydraulic breakers, buckets and mining equipment. It has a manufacturing site in both northeast England and in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province.

Gary Miller, main board member of Miller, says his team decided to establish a manufacturing site in China because the growing scale of the business has meant that it wanted to shift from a manufacturing model of welding to casting and could not find a suitable partner in the UK to take on the casting task.

Different from welding, which joins metal under high heat, casting makes a mold to create new equipment from scratch. Casting allows quicker and larger-scale production of industrial equipment.

Unable to find a suitable UK partner, Miller then went to China to establish a joint venture, which has worked well in producing high quality tools.

Ford Aerospace Ltd of Hebburn, Tyne and Wear, a supplier of precision machined or pressed components and assemblies to high technology industries, is also considering setting up a joint venture in China to do production.

Dou Tsang, sales and export coordinator at Ford, says the company's high-precision tools are in great demand from Chinese aviation and high-speed train companies, and it is working with China CSR Corporation Ltd and China CNR Corporation.

Ford has two distributors in China, but Tsang says the team is looking to establish a joint venture to expand in the Chinese market quickly.

"We hope to manufacture some of our products in China so costs can be lowered, but also we can sell our products to some Chinese military sector clients who are not allowed to buy foreign manufactured products," Tsang says.

Northeast England is also strong in the energy sector, and especially offshore wind energy because much of the region is coastal.

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