Made in Wales Roundtable 2024

Profitable sales: Find a niche that you can go after to make good volumes, and make some good money out of it. Working with Aldi and Lidl opened up markets for us.

Investment: We're getting more requests to produce alcohol and soft drinks than ever before. I need to make it as efficiently as possible. I need to get the machinery in place. 

Support: If I’m helped to stay and invest in Wales, I’m here. But if not, being an entrepreneur, if I can get Holland or England to set up a manufacturing plant with me, and get the right level of investment, I’m gone tomorrow. 

Recruitment: It was hard to get people. Recently, that's changed. People want to get back into work. 

Skills and automation: We are having to teach people how to read and write, because the skills gap is that basic at the moment. The future of manufacturing is to have more robotics in the business, pay engineers more and have less people working. That takes the issue of recruitment, training, development and managing people away.

Opportunities: The next generation are interested in authenticity, sustainability and things that are at odds with pure capitalism. If we embrace those things, there are lots of opportunities for manufacturing. And you can make money out of it.

Innovation: You've got to be really fast. You can't be serial, you've got to be parallel. You've got to back a few horses and create real things before you can get near scale and volume. 

Think big: We get funding from people like Innovate UK. We have done projects with universities. We have a vision to do things better than anybody else. If you're going to innovate, don't do incremental things, just do something new, because then you can own it. 

Automation: The idea that it just runs day and night is not generally the case. My experience is that we need people to constantly tinker with things.

Motivation: People like being part of a story. You're trying to do something, possibly against bigger competitors. If you've got very open communication about the challenges, then people feel part of it. 

Innovation: Innovation comes from adopting new technologies. This is how you stay competitive. One approach is short term - when you have a problem with skills or productivity, you have to solve that problem. The long term approach is that you have to develop your vision for the future. This comes from being able to see what's coming on the horizon.

Prospects: I'm very optimistic. I have observed an increased interest in (manufacturers) co-operating with academics, learning about new technologies and looking at opportunities. We need more visibility as a country. We have many things to be proud of.

Opportunities: With metal additive manufacturing, you can create new materials with new properties and get ahead of the competition. The other opportunity is AI (artificial intelligence). Automation is not always the key to the problem. It is suitable for mass production.

Funding: Welsh manufacturers have to apply to Westminster (in some cases) for money on the same level as many other probably more developed areas. There should be funding allocated to Wales through a funding formula, with the funds managed here locally.

Sales focus: We've shaved about half our customer base. We focus on the ones who do what they say they're going to do. They work in collaboration with us. We have won new customers, but we have been much more selective about who we want to work with and how we want to work with them.

Product range: We are now part of a group. By buying other companies, we're better able to offer a turnkey service. So if we're working with an end user who wants a chemical process line, we can offer the effluent treatment plant, fume extraction, scrubbing and chemical storage that goes with it.

Staff retention: Train them well so they become attractive (to other employers), and treat them well so that they want to stay.

Workforce: We are losing potentially good people at primary school level where they become completely disengaged with the education system. Those that do stay engaged in the education system are not being prepared for the workplace.

Prospects: I’m optimistic, but I don't think the Welsh Government is particularly interested in business.

Prospects: I am optimistic for manufacturing. After Covid, people evaluated their supply chains and bought more local. I'd love to see a re-energising of that. We've got so many innovative ideas and great institutions coming up with new products. How do we retain that manufacturing in the UK and Wales?

Sports lessons: We've learned a lot from sport. A team like the Ospreys have to develop their own talent. When they have developed the talent, how do they retain it? 

Training: Every member of staff has an area of growth to tap into. It's about identifying that and making sure there's an environment (in which) they feel safe in doing it. There are different ways. There is a physical academy in our factory; there's a suite of interactive tools that we're developing; and there are academic partnerships and boot camps.

Support: The visibility could be improved. You have to find your way. In my experience, funding tends to go to academia and recruitment agencies. It would be nice if it came to industry first.

Prospects: I am optimistic that we can move forward with more speed. We've got nearly 6,000 manufacturers in Wales. Manufacturing is just under 18 per cent of GVA (gross value added) in Wales, the UK average is under 10 per cent. We need to shout louder about what we do.

Recruitment: Skills shortages have been around for a long time. Now we’re moving more into a labour shortage of people with the will to go the journey with you - people that you can see a future in, that will become your future leaders.

Support: The funding landscape in Wales is very complicated. We don't make it easy. And while the Welsh Government has Business Wales as a one stop shop, that's not an easy route. When you are looking at a project, you need to have sight of all funding options. But you just get to hear about a lot of them when somebody mentions them. It’s not helped by the fact that Wales is broken into four regions. We have 22 unitary authorities. It's complicated.

Prospects: I'm optimistic. The interest rate environment is one where people believe we're at the peak. We're seeing significant increases in requests for funding, which is a positive thing. And we're seeing a lot more clients nearshoring, or onshoring their work because of geopolitical issues. 

Public funding: If you're a larger business, you tend to find the routes (to funding) and you've got the resources available to put towards it. If you're a small business, you probably haven't got experience and you’ve got to find the right person. If you ask for some money and it can take you 9 to 12 months to get to a decision, you can't move forward with a project or any kind of innovation on the basis of potentially (receiving funding).

Ownership options: Private equity investors are very active. There is activity and opportunity in mergers and acquisitions. We see overseas businesses coming on board, where sterling is seen as cheap, and therefore assets can be purchased.

Skills: The challenge is keeping alternative qualifications relevant for Welsh manufacturing. It's not just a case of doing some pipe fitting or bricklaying or whatever. It's trying to make it more relevant to lots of different disciplines within the sector, whether that’s IT or sciences. Our young people should be able to learn those skills without having to go on the college or university path.

Prospects: Manufacturing is so varied; and manufacturers in Swansea and west Wales have different challenges to Cardiff based businesses. So there's no one size fits all in terms of answers. I am optimistic.

Prospects: I am optimistic with some conditions. There are funding opportunities available. There are manufacturing businesses here that are growing and very successful. And there is lots of overseas interest in Welsh businesses. Industry finds a way. Businesses have been remarkably resilient over the last decade, and they found a way through everything that has been thrown in front of them.

Funding: The Development Bank of Wales have been quite successful in allowing people to build up businesses to become investable and fundable for the wider commercial market. Their ability to do co-investments is attracting more investment. We see a lot of use of R&D (research and development) tax credits, which help with cash flow.

Challenges: We need to find a way to sort of solve some of the structural problems that we have, such as transport. If there is a change of government, it will be interesting to see how conversations develop over potentially rejoining the (European) customs union that we left. That would make the landscape easier. 

Recruitment: There's been a huge issue with supply and demand. The pressure has been to find enough good quality candidates across multiple disciplines and sectors. Candidates have four or five opportunities to look at. They can be so much more choosy than they have been before. How you find your staff is about attraction, retention, and getting people to buy into your culture so you can keep hold of them.

Prospects: There are so many good dynamic businesses in Wales. I think the future's bright. It's a tough climate at the moment, but it will right itself if the right things are done and apprenticeship schemes are supported. We've suffered from a lack of apprenticeships over the years, which has caught up with us. Network 75 is a fantastic scheme.

Support: There's a lot of red tape, from what I understand, on being able to access funding. There's support there, but  how it gets to businesses needs to be simplified and clarified.