Re-shoring within the uk manufacturing industry: an inevitable decline?

Global manufacturing has received great attention during 2015, and even
though UK manufacturing has often been ascribed with a negative stigma,
one cannot dispute that with a workforce of approximately 2.6 million
people, accounting for approximately half of the UK’s exports and ranked
as the 11th largest manufacturing industry in the world (The
Manufacturer, 2014), it plays a crucial role within the British economy.
Since 2013 there has been an outburst in headlines concerning the concept
of re-shoring. Traditionally, in order to save costs, developed economies
shifted manufacturing operations to developing economies, however, due
to the rise in labour costs, transportation costs, ease of market access and
concerns over quality levels, there has been an increasing trend to bring
manufacturing activities back home. Bringing manufacturing back from
developing nations to developed nations, such as the UK, can be
acknowledged as a dissident practice. The main aims of this chapter are to
provide readers with a set of advantages associated with re-shoring and to
evaluate the disadvantages of this phenomenon. Findings suggest that
unless there are major reforms within governmental policies, factors such
as an increasing shortage of skilled workers, high energy costs and the
complexity of planning regulations ultimately outweigh the advantages of
manufacturing in the UK, hence, it can be concluded that the practice of
re-shoring to the UK may in fact inevitably decline.