Clive Bowers: Government must act now before manufacturing quits UK

In fact, we’ve pointed out that corrugated packaging is not only an essential industry, but an excellent barometer of British trade and commerce. When UK plc does well, so do we.

The decline of our customer base has been significant in recent years and as manufacturing moves out of the UK packaging has to follow. There has been a marked decrease in the need for UK packaging for electronic, automotive and other engineering products and this has become worse in the recent economic climate.

We need to see a manufacturing renaissance in the UK. The government needs to provide far more encouragement to home-grown entrepreneurs to start manufacturing businesses. It should make it easier for existing manufacturers to do business in the UK and increase the amount of effort being put in to attract overseas investors.

The Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) is urging a change towards a more positive mindset on the future viability of manufacturing in the UK. We should not accept decline is inevitable. Given the right conditions, manufacturing of all kinds, not just high-tech, should be able to operate profitably in the UK. New attitudes in the workforce, combined with new technologies, skills and knowledge, means that UK manufacturing can compete internationally on quality, service and price.

December’s pre-Budget report unfortunately did not address the issue of promoting the UK manufacturing base. If anything, it made life far more difficult for present employers and did not incentivise prospective entrepreneurs to invest in UK business.

We are committed to lobbying but realise this is a long-term programme. Working with organisations like Wrap, CPI is helping to develop best practice in packaging design, encouraging customers to rethink old habits and discover new opportunities. The industry has continued to invest heavily in skills and equipment and this opens up new ways of doing things.

The industry’s goal for 2010 must be to maintain the momentum which has built up in terms of offering customers higher levels of knowledge and service, so they can use packaging to improve their efficiency, environmental performance and profitability.

As the economy begins to recover, we must wave the flag for packaging, destroying myths, promoting the benefits of our products, helping influential people put packaging in perspective and providing factual evidence of how we act to the good of business and society as a whole.

Clive Bowers is chief executive of Smurfit Kappa UK and chairman of the CPI’s Corrugated Sector

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