With Covid-19 exposing frailties in the UK supply chain, last week’s poll asked whether the current crisis will drive more manufacturers to consider reshoring.
The need to strengthen and simplify UK engineering supply chains by reshoring aspects of production has been a major topic of industry debate for decades: arguably since the very point that manufacturers began outsourcing production to more competitively priced overseas economies.
In recent years – as the value of actually making things has begun to sink in – efforts to beef up UK supply chains and encourage manufacturers to favour domestic production have gathered momentum.
But the Covid-19 pandemic has now turbocharged these arguments by exposing the frailties of many of our supply chains and bringing home in tragic detail just how reliant we have become on the overseas supply of strategically critical items. And there is now growing momentum behind the argument to re-establish UK production of these parts and protect SME manufacturing.
Of course, reshoring is far from straightforward. Shifting manufacturing from overseas and re-establishing the capability to meet existing demands takes time. But the current crisis has illustrated that UK manufacturers – many of whom have rapidly shifted production to critical components that can’t be sourced from existing supply chains – are perhaps more nimble and adaptable than even they thought.
Whatever your views on the practicalities of unpicking decades of outsourcing it seems likely that when the current crisis passes, and we look at the ways in which our economy and manufacturing base can ensure its future resilience, then the arguments for reshoring will be louder than ever before.
Is this is a realistic, or even a sensible aim. Should the Covid-19 pandemic trigger a major reshoring strategy? Is this an unrealistic given the low overseas costs that drove us to offshore in the first place? Perhaps you think that supply chains – in the face of a potentially once in a century health crisis – have proved to be resilient enough, just. Or should we consider a more nuanced approach, where we ensure we have the domestic capability to produce the kind of critical components and equipment that have been in such short supply in recent weeks?
This poll is now closed but we still welcome your comments below the line. Please note that all comments are moderated.
Hi All,
We have as a country with political drive closed down and off shored our manufacturing base for decades.
Whilst from a purely financial point of view this kind of made sense, it has left us with massive problems. An under skilled rejected workforce, large areas of the country depressed, and a scarily weak supply chain!
The off-shoring made the rich richer and the country poorer as a whole.
Other countries in Europe have protected their industries and have been able to manage better.
So now with this pandemic and the losing of the financial sector we have come to rely on, yes now is the time to reinvest in manufacturing.
We still have amazing engineers in the country and with the right backing we must reclaim the industrial revolution which is only just getting going.
We also have to realise that by pulling back from the cheaper countries they will be out of pocket, and that some will not suffer this well. We have a moral duty to help them as we regather and reconfigure. We can see that’s going to happen as we did the same thing to our industrial heartlands and left them to rot.
None of this is going to happen if we continue to only think of short term benefit, we should take a longer view and a global view. We need to move faster and invest from the cradle to the grave.
we have one world lets live it well.
I see Japan has announced a one billion pot of cash to give grants to its firms who move production from China back to Japan. If Japan can do this, then why does the UK Government not do the same?
They should also cut UK business rates on manufacturing sites down to the European average, rather than the 2 to 3 times higher rate it is now.
Interesting snippet on the ScienceDaily website. Researchers tested home made masks in a suitable lab. The best were made from 2 different fabrics, so each fabric stops a different droplet size. One layer cotton + 2 layers polyester Chiffon produced a mask that was 80 to 99% effective. No use for the NHS, but I bet a lot of ordinary Brits would snap them up if available in supermarkets.
The crisis ‘should’ trigger a UK wide reshoring strategy – the real question is: will it ?
In my opinion, offshoring was a disaster from day one, for individuals and for businesses, I’ve seen good people and good companies fold just so some executive or shareholder could make a few more bucks. The current crisis should not surprise anyone.
At the very least, we need to identify our strategic industries and ensure they and their supply chains are UK owned and protected – and that included the NHS and Care sectors.
All government spending (our taxes) on major projects and equipments should be focused on buying British first, then European and only then the rest of the world.
As well as industries we need to ensure that the private and public sectors are also investing in people. We need a return to home based engineering excellence and less buying in of skills.
And, we need all businesses operating in the UK to be paying their taxes.
To me this is a common sense approach for our future survival not a negative, insular, little Britain approach !
Not so sure about reshoring, but it should make in-sourcing production more popular. That isn’t exactly good news for the UK. Manufacturing centres which are far from their supply chains might have to close and move to where their supply chains are.
Some of the car companies need to close capacity, and with Brexit, Britain is now the obviouso place to close such capacity. Maybe Corona virus provides a more politically correct excuse for closing the sites.
Off-shoring has made the UK a hollow shell and exported the prosperity of many communities.
Should we re-shore – yes
Will we as the UK – no as our political leaders all believe in free market economics and our companies are designed for profit over everything, leading to cheapest supply wins (with a modicum of risk thrown in)
I believe it should trigger “reshoring” as a philosophy; not necessarily because everything should be made in the UK. But we do need to have the skills to make things as otherwise much innovation cannot happen; if we do not develop manufacturing technologies then we are limited to new opportunities arising and, most importantly for business/finance/politicians we are ignorant customers and, too, can be denied access to technology.
The idea of critical technology/supplies is interesting but has a serious flaw in that what is critical will evolve over time and with innovations; this is followed in the UK with the importance of “high value” or doing “what we have skills in”; both hostages to fortune (as, for example, Xerox found when Canon grew a new, larger, photocopier market) .
The Victorians developed their own manufacturing technology; developing the iron-carbon alloy known as steel – and being able to do it at low cost. Today one might look at manufacturing advanced composites (eg thermoplastic or homogeneous), scalable microchannel heat-exchangers/reactors or developing RP manufacturing and see these as opportunities for innovative manufacturing technologies…
Critical items may be worth re-shoring – but it is only when a crisis occurs that ‘critical’ becomes clear. Having buffer stocks is worthy of consideration (and the associated need to replenish perishable items such as some PPE), but this goes against the lean mantra of the past 30 years or so, which has led in some cases to fragile supply chains. So maybe now is the time to review all aspects of engineering business theory – which has practical impacts. I’m not saying throw the baby out with the bath water, but do a proper analysis (as far as, is possible) to work out what is appropriate.
Offshoring of work, and also management, and ownership, made good sense when effectively the employees/unions took over their companies and, with the help of their political party, prevented change, and taxed the equity holders (aka ‘bosses’) out of existence.
If we are to start up companies again via import substitution then we will need to get rid of the destructive ideology that ‘bosses’ are solely motivated by greed and ‘workers’ are mere victims.
Most poorer people aspire to becoming wealthier preferably by their own efforts, and indeed most wealth people today were once poor when they were younger.
I remember a friend of mine losing out to a Chinese company for some very complex moulding tooling. The buyer said he could get the tooling from China at 30% less than the price my friend was quoting. The buyer reported to his directors that he had saved many thousands of pounds.
Finance reported that they had paid several thousand pounds to cover the travel costs of engineers travelling to China to check various aspects of design.
The tool, when delivered, did not work. As an automotive production line was stopped, the customer, in some degree of panic asked my friend to repair the tooling over the weekend. He quoted an eye-watering price, the buyer demurred, my friend told him the price would increase by 10% every half hour and the (highly profitable) order was placed promptly.
The motto is to take into account all costs and that it is much better to work with a supplier who is local and who can react to problems very quickly.
This is my recollection of an event about fifteen years ago so the details might be blurred. However, the principles hold true in my opinion.
Ultimately its the end customer that decides this. If they’re willing to pay a premium for a “made in the UK” product then all well and good but history has shown that typically they’re not willing to do this and will buy the cheapest available product.
Its the same philosophy as “just in time”, having safety stock ties up capital and reduces profit but when something goes wrong it goes wrong big time. But if your competitor has no safety stock and can offer the same product or service at a little less than you can you have to do the same to stay competitive.
While the main question is quite warranted, the narrative of the article mixes supply chain terms and ignores the actuality of supply chains in the last few years.
The supply-side disruption that Covid-19 has brought naturally focuses attention on supply chain risk mitigation, as every major disruption has done, from Fukushima to H1N1. The calls to diversify supplier bases now are echos of previous calls, and it remains to be seen whether this time they’ll be heeded.
More widely, while supply chains saw a sharp rise in globalisation, with manufacturing and many services relocated to low-cost countries in the 1990s and 2000s, the reality today is not so clear-cut. First, the financial advantages that those low-cost countries had are now far reduced: the cost of an engineering/technical person in China or India has gone up, driven by the demand for their skills. On the other hand, the many centres where that expertise lay – such as the Wuhan region – means that there is still a good base of knowledge to justify locating assets (plants, call centres, etc) in those places.
A good supply chain planner will look at the supplier and customer bases, and take account of a range of factors to decide where to place the parts of their supply chain. That include cost, talent, lead times, quality and – especially now – risk. Certainly some of that risk mitigation will involve shortening supply chains – nearshoring or reshoring – but the advantages of different locations will continue to be dominant for a while yet.
Note: The article talks about outsourcing, which is an altogether different aspect of operations. Outsourcing refers to the contracting of a third party to do some of the work that you used to do but that isn’t core. For instance, the financial or customer service parts of an engineering business. Outsourcing providers don’t have to be located outside of the company’s country, so talk of “reshoring and outsourcing” is an “apples and pears” discussion.
Further to my last. For goodness sake get the energy costs for industry to a competitive level so the UK companies can fight on a level playing field.
We live in a technically connected and dependent world, it would be hard for any manufacturing not to have to rely on others .Whether that’s raw materials, processed materials, IP or finished products.
One of the great benefits of everyone being dependent on everyone else helps stabilises the world against the ravages of full out war. A sort of ‘mutual economic pain’ which is a lot preferable to ‘Mutual antihalation’ philosophy that maintained the relative peace during the cold war era.
Some very telling comments made above which can be wholeheartedly agreed with many companies saving a bundle of money on base purchasing costs but ignoring the incidental or consequential costs that came with the bargain of substandard items, outside required specification and that did not work as expected. Give them their due often the samples were fine and it was not until the quantities arrived duly marked as compliant with the CE mark to confirm compliance with European standards that the nature of the beast emerges.
But surely CE is the established mark of European compliance. Not when it innocently gets appended to mean Chinese Export. Lots of really good quality products have come out of the Chinese manufacturing machine but there are times when this is swamped by the level of the low cost counterfeit side of their economy. Lets hope our political leaders help the country seize the opportunity when it is presented to them.
Re-shoring as much as possible can only make the UK stronger. Especially following Brexit, as (eventually) we will have much more freedom of tendering and commissioning of contracts when we no longer need to advertise projects EU wide and follow OEJU rules.
With ref to Bill Church story. Just remember the number of engineers with a lifetimes experience and expertise that were thrown on the scrapheap because the purchasing department had made such massive cost savings. Where are they now ? Ready to step back in to save the day I somehow doubt it.
Most manufacturing in the UK can be considered dead or at least semi-conscious. The last time this happened to other countries was after the 2nd world war when Germany and Japan were defeated and left to pick up the pieces (sometimes with our help). The result was a fresh start which led to 2 of the most dynamic manufacturing centres in the world. Perhaps we can take advantage of a similar ‘clean sheet’ situation, particularly with the rapid advances in computer-control now available, meaning that even most of China’s engineering capacity is already growing out of date when 2-3 years is sufficient for better processes to arrive. China makes another interesting point; it got there not by defeat but by waking up to the possibilities suddenly, which has much the same effect.
The rot for UK manufacturing started when our Engineering base was migrated to the EU in the Thatcher era. Our Machine Tool manufacturing was usurped by cheap and vastly inferior products from Spain and Italy. Jones and Shipman, vehicle manufacturing and supporting industries et. al. disappeared overnight and latterly other industry which sprang up to replace the void was in turn obliterated by even cheaper Chinese and Asian copying of Western Technology.
All protestations were fought off by politicians who argued that to interfere was “protectionism” and unfair, now comes the realisation that as most of us have known and realised for a very long time, this was a grave mistake and should now be rectified permanently.
I now suspect that the culprits who have made their millions from cheap labour will now lie low until this realisation and outcry has died down and will then resume their pursuit of more easy pickings and profits regardless of the country’s future interests, and that includes security.
It makes perfect sense to reshore our industry, and to sell to the worls the best quality products available in the world . We should have stopped trying to compete on price a long time ago! It also makes sense to retake control of all our utilities from foreign ownership, as all they need to do if we start to compete with their industry, is raise our energy costs! Water, gas, electricity, rail and telecoms should all be wholly British owned with legislation to prevent any foreign “investment” We need to start being as nationalistic and protectionist as the countries that we do business with are!
Without doubt the Government should support reshoring, made in UK still carries a premium around the world. However I doubt the ‘bean counters’ will want to support this, again the Govt. of the day should make it possible for British companies to compete on a level playing field, energy and tax costs and the myriad of company ‘shackles’ need to be aligned with the most competitive nations as a minimum, that way quality will win the day and once again made in the UK will be something to be proud of.
“Sell on price, eat rice” was the saying in the 1970’s. Unfortunately we didn’t deliver quality or innovation either, at least not enough to cope with the penalties of an oil industry and monetarism pusing the pound up high. Nevertheless, we do not have enough people to compete in low added value manufactuiring and without an innovation like Universal Basic Income and the abolition of minimum wages people cannot be employed at a low enough wage for low added value. So, only critical items should be reshored. They should be made with as much automation as possible. Our advantages are reliable infrastructure and technician skills (somehow despite Cinderalla status for technical education).
I have an interest to declare. I am the agent for a Chinese maker of machines for non woven textiles that feed into machines that make PPE, especially masks. We should be getting these and then building our own (Durham University Engineering Science automated underpants manufacture – it’s not difficult). But where are the middle sized companies capable of such investment? The FTSE 100 dominate the world and we have many interesting small firms but mid sized manufacturers are conspicuous by their absence.
Not without a fundamental change in law. If a buyer intentionally pays over the odds to ‘buy British’ and a director ignores the practice, this is a breach of fiduciary duty and the director become personally liable for the company’s loss possibly also for punitive damages
Unfortunately our industries are ruled by accountants with too much power. I worked for a large technically advanced company that had a strategy to out-source 35% of it’s production to “low cost countries” I also personally set up an engineering design house in India from scratch. I can tell you that the challenges, risks and costs far out-weigh the effort in doing this. Today, technology in design and manufacturing has moved on, I do believe that unless you have massive volumes of similar parts that there is no significant advantage in outsourcing to low cost countries.
Most of the above comments have merit, but have missed the main point. Pandemics come around every so many years, and the Corona Virus was overdue, the same is true for Wars. The UK had a strong manufacturing industry, that supported the second world war effort, to day it does not, the sad thing is that the USA had a strong manufacturing industry, that supported the second world war effort, but today it does not. As Britain has just found out, in emergencies it is essential that it produces the products in Britain, not overseas. We do not know who will be the country who will start the third world war, but history shows us it is over due and the USA may not be relied on to assist in defending Britain, so we better have ALL the manufacturing industry to do it our selves. Finance has been found to fight the Corona virus, so surely it can be found to defend Britain.
I believe that all imported goods should have tariffs added so that their cost is equivalent to manufacturing products in this country, as importing without tariffs increases the tax burden on our population. Imposing tariffs then would balance with our policy of paying a living wage and all the taxes our manufacturers pay often before the goods even reach the consumer. An additional benefit would be that in the long term this would reduce the production taxes paid by British manufacturers so enabling them to competitively export. In addition the sales of all companies to foreign ownership should be examined for possible effect on our strategic requirements. We must retain the resources required to respond to crises that are occurring more frequently e.g. SARs, swine flu, etc.
That is nonsense. Trading with the world on mutually favourable terms is what makes us stronger, particularly as part of a multinational group of neighbouring nations which operate a common, single market. The UK cannot survive intact as an island.
Those sorts of protective measures only serve to breed inefficiency in industry as well as higher prices, impoverishing the nation, as so many nations have shown throughout history. Open trade is how you get efficiency and higher quality. Skills and infrastructure investment, and clear political leadership and strategy, are how you develop the foundations for growth and productivity.
I believe that reshoring does not necessitate protective tariffs (unless there is some need to protectagainst “dumping” or some hollowing out.
I believe that the talk about “high value” manufacturing has been interpreted as high price (of part or manufacturing machinery); this goes against the driving forces of the industrial revolution (in the UK) which focused on affordability product and its manufacture.
Strutt & Arkwright – and Wedgwood too focused on radical innovation which included affordability – and eschewed cheap labour.
If the competition has cheap labour then you need to move from that by manufacturing (mainly) and design; if the added value is low then one needs to make the cost of the value lower (i.e. sort out the manufacturing and make it better too).
I believe that the lack of understanding and appreciation of manufacturing processes is a major element of the hollowing out of ability and capability to manufacture.
I would like to think that there are some significant opportunities for more local sourcing.
We have seen the challenges that long supply chains can cause and how easily they can be fractured. at the same time we have a manufacturing supply chain that battles on against sometimes impossible odds.
We have good H&S conditions for workers, a focus on resource and energy efficiency so just continuing to export our carbon footprint is not ethical.
Tariffs are of course one way, but can work both ways by increasing the costs of spares and raw materials, but some recognition of the wider value to the UK economy should be factored in – jobs, skills, local taxes, apprenticeships etc etc and can be encourage through the right fiscal levers, particularly in large infrastructure projects for instance – projects that others countries would not dream of allowing to be sourced entirely offshore. We work hard to enable our companies (who are part of the manufacturing supply chain using casting as a route to manufacture) to be visible, (through events, our own website and reshoring initiatives) and thereby able to quote, but they are so frequently not considered, or are then undercut. Help to reinvest and improve productivity could be facilitated, again via fiscal stimuli.
This is an interesting debate and the one thing overlooked is the problem of globalism as wanted allegedly, by the elite so they get richer. When you have any worldwide demand you get a bidding war and the richest countries get the commodities, albeit it at the highest price and this cannot be overlooked. In this case we were competing against most of the world for basic commodities and the one thing this should have taught us is that we need to be more independent and more prepared by doing more ourselves.
There is a simple reason why we do not have new engineering companies growing to supply the market with machines, parts and gadgets. You cannot get insurance to manufacture a product without a track record. It is as simple as that. There is no way to start a manufacturing company from scratch and abide by the law.
The need to strengthen and simplify UK engineering supply chains by reshoring aspects of production has been a major topic of industry debate for decades: arguably ever since manufacturers began outsourcing production to more competitively priced overseas economies there has been a race to the bottom based on price. However, there is an intrinsic value attached to making things here in the UK, not least being the opportunities to innovate. http://www.Reshoring.UK highlights the skills and resources of the UK supply chains and aids manufacturers when considering domestic production for new projects or for the relocation ‘onshore’ of existing work programmes.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic exposing the frailties of many of the UK supply chains, underlining in stark detail just how reliant many have become on the overseas supply of critical items, there should be more impetus put on re-establishing UK production of these parts and protect SME manufacturing.
Twenty two leading industrial engineering associations are behind the growing Reshoring UK initiative which has been developed to assist manufacturers locate and understand the breadth of skills vested in the SME engineering companies capable of delivering UK-based products and services
Everyone behind the Reshoring UK platform appreciates the complexities involved when transferring manufacturing from overseas. The website portal has been created to help re-establish the capability required to meet manufacturers demands and those businesses that have used it in this current crisis have realised just how much capability and competence is available within the UK.
“We know it is a myth that the UK no longer manufactures anything, but it is often repeated and needs to be dispelled. In reality, prior to this pandemic we were the ninth largest manufacturing nation in the world contributing 10% of the UK Gross Value Added (GVA). The sector plays a vital role as an employer, with a workforce of around 2.7 million, and an innovator accounting for 70% of all business Research and Development (R&D) spend.”
Even before the global threat from COVID-19 there was a paradigm shift from OEMs looking at the benefits of reshoring, as highlighted by the Lloyds Bank report ‘Business in Britain: Manufacturing’. A sponsor of the Reshoring UK facility, research from Lloyds Bank showed more than a third (37%) of firms asked said they were planning to move manufacturing processes back to the UK that had previously been offshored to territories like Asia and eastern Europe.
The prime motive for this, cited by 71% of those with these plans, was to improve quality – a telling endorsement of the high standards that British manufacturers and workers uphold, which also has extremely positive implications for UK supply chains.
“With so much value to be gained for both sides, large manufacturers only need to look more closely at what is already available to them in this country, in terms of innovation, technology transfer across sectors, and quality. http://www.reshoring.uk urges the manufacturing sector to seize this opportunity to reconsider its supply base
Julia Moore, Chief Executive, GTMA
It should! As long as we keep the polititicans and short term gainers away from the bean counters.
Martin Bennet makes some good points about startups – and it is interesting the that InnovateUK though mentioning pre-startups do not have anything to support such essential part of getting a startup setup (born?) – especially for manufacturing technology. They seem to rely on market led design (usually of big companies) – rather than innovative and novel manufacture. Black swan events are times for black swan solutions (radical innovation) and thence disruptive innovation (in design and application).
But we do need to have a climate for innovation – especially in manufacturing; it is evident, for example, that in the automotive industry the issues with implementing hot forming technology are being addressed but, apparently. not in the UK; this includes the proper design of cheap/affordable cold tooling and the advent of sophisticated thermal tooling (laser and induction).
I did look at reshoring.uk but was unable to see these technologies – so it seems there is a limit to innovation there ;-{
I should say that there are are other fields of manufacturing, such as casting (tooling) and for metal or thermoplastic composites – but I am not looked as deeply into them.
Yes. Reshoring does have an opportunity for innovation. And we do need to get ready for it.
It is hard to profitably employ people in the UK. Young people who were keen to do things at 16 have lost their way under compulsory schooling by 18. They head to college for a huge student debt and an undue sense of their own importance, so expect instant rewards for little effort. And small small businesses get no encouragement from HMG, just ever more impositions to gratify the unthinking voter or HMG’s beancounters (e.g. MTD – great for Xero and Quickbooks but a burden for us, Workplace Pensions, etc). So the best approach is not to employ people but to bring in more machinery. But those machines are all made in the Far East, because we off-shored that industry too!
We’re run by folk who despise manufacture, offshore their lucre, evade tax, don’t understand science or engineering but worship wealth for its own sake – we are parasitised by those who know the price of everything but the value of nowt. So, while I strongly favour re-shoring, I don’t see it happening any time soon in post-industrial Britain, nor lasting long if it does happen.
Interesting point Julian and one which could be dealt with easily, so here are my suggestions.
Give any new start up certain exemptions, simplify their tax to zero rate for a prescribed period, this would include all business taxation, employers N.I. contributions, and any profits based taxation with the proviso that these are invested back directly into the growth of the company.
If this was done for one year it would give start up innovation a fighting chance, then for year two they increase these in increments, say to 50% on everything, then by year three they move back up to full taxation.
This could be underwritten by Government (the people) then owning a percentage of the company in increments for these prescribed periods and this share would drop as taxation rises, this also gives time for reskilling of employees and the training of new employees where appropriate.
S Martin makes some useful suggestions but there are some limitations as to resources and re-sourcing pre-startups that InnovateUK was supposed to help with grants (i.e. funding for technology R&D).
Unfortunately the best innovative ideas need developing and the better the development before starting the better (so a climate for sharing and collaborative development of ideas is required).
Funding for the startup itself is then required – to implement the innovative (manufacturing) technology and prepare it for customers.
In the USA companies often highlight the difficult birth and poor support for that.
{In much radical innovation the hardware is cheap but the manpower still requires to be paid for…}
But it is still the lack of a climate/network for innovation that I see (from a historical perspective) that we have forgotten.
Two per cent voted that existing supply chains are adequate! The counter evidence is there for all to see. If there are sufficient reserve stocks and resupply is not interrupted then yes, but when neither of those two conditions are met disaster strikes! Precisely the situation we are in now.
We should absolutely- I would go far further and wider. Manufacturing should not primarily be seen as an employment issue. The main thing China or India has is people. Remove the need for people and have massive robot capability at the core. There are also massive sustaibility and logistics benefits. This is about creating value and a knowledge innovation and production society driven by the worlds best innovation in world class university and research facilities. NHS for example – 95% of all drugs used in the NHS are patent free. ALL of them should be UK gov. centrally produced for less than pennies, saving £billions upon £billions. We need to protect our capabilities and infrastructure.
Brilliant. Meds used by the NHS are only patent-free if they are out of the licence period. They are called “generics” and are used by preference because of the lower cost, they are mainly produced abroad (it is cheaper than setting-up the plant/paying wages-salaries etc). If they are not out of the licence period, then producin g them here (without paying the patent holder) is called “illegal” (and is expensive). In the NHS, 80% of the meds prescribed by *primary* care are generic. Rather less than 80% are prescribed by *secondary* care, because secondary care is rather more specialised. The original licence period for new meds is 20 years, with a possible 5 added on. And if the drug is useful for another treatment out of its original licence, it can be re-licenced for that! Of course, in our new “Jolly-Roger” type of brexit operation, the UK may choose to become a pirate operation and ignore licence terms….a bit costly, we still export elsewhere, and tariffs can be used topenalise countries…