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Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

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Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#21

Post by bnastic »

mappingbabel0 wrote: post #6

I spoke with Raspberry Pi about this for a news story I wrote. They said this about manufacturing: "The temptation is always to push manufacturing to a low-cost region, but I think with the right attention to detail there's no reason British manufacturing can't compete in a global marketplace," Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi foundation told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "It shows that British manufacturing can be co…

A lot of professional sound studio gear is still being made in the UK and the US (and has always been. Studio types are very picky about the origin of the gear they are using).

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#22

Post by option_greek »

Zenst wrote: post #20

Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one. Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are: 1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made mo…

2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other countries to do the same.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#23

Post by toyg »

> we had been unable to find a British manufacturer [...] who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us.

I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh factory... owned and run by Sony.

And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about building houses. Sigh.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#24

Post by simonbarker87 »

oliwarner wrote: post #19
simonbarker87 wrote: post #4

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infac…

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

It's very true that if the components are made in china then it is easier to keep your supply chain reliable if you assemble next door and that's a risk of bring assembly back to uk but some other risks (which can be of greater concern) are reduced by shipping components to the uk and then assembling. It all depends what your product uses, there's no longer a one size fits all solution that there seemed to be 10 years ago of "just make it there and ship it back"

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#25

Post by simonbarker87 »

toyg wrote: post #23

> we had been unable to find a British manufacturer [...] who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us. I think that sums up current European attitudes to manufacturing and capitalism all too well, sadly. Note how they eventually ended up with a Welsh factory... owned and run by Sony. And what does a supposedly business-friendly government do? Worry about building hous…

Well, our ageing housing stock, escalating house prices and lack of urban social mobility does warrant focus on housing, the knock on effects for the construction industry also show this as being a sensible economic policy as well as solving an increasing socioeconomic problem.

I'm not sure how using a Welsh factory shows how this government is anti capitalist or anti manufacturing - given that Wales is in the UK and it is the UK government I don't think it matters where it is in the country. The factory is probably based there as a result of the government incentives about a decade to fifteen years ago which were introduced to get large corporations to base operations in areas of Wales who had been relient on the mines and who, at that time, had spiralling unemployment.

Alos, The EU isn't anti manufacturing. Everyone is looking to the German model (high value manufacturing) as they are the only one bucking the downward trend and actually growing. The UK itself still has a very healthy manufacturing sector - I forget the exact figure but it makes up a double digit percentage of our GDP so it is not insignificant at all.

I agree more could be done to improve the position of manufacturing but to look at the Chinese model and say "hey, we should have all the back here" is not the answer. Electronics, chemicals and high end goods we should have but let china make the Barbie Dolls and cheap tat, that's not what we should be aspiring to.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#26

Post by andrewcooke »

oliwarner wrote: post #19
simonbarker87 wrote: post #4

This is great news for RPi team and for uk manufacturing. I've been saying for over a year now that if there is a reasonable level of automation then there is no reason why china should be cheaper than the uk.so long as you can maintain a robust supply chain of components (I should think using a sony facility is beneficial to this) then it can work out great. We priced our product for uk and china and china was infac…

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

"bleem"?

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#27

Post by michaelt »

option_greek wrote: post #22
Zenst wrote: post #20

Fantastic news and glad they have been on the case about this since day one. Two things out of this whole affair that stand out are: 1) UK Manufacturing clearly needs a better way to make its services available so people can utilise them, the goverment should be helping in this area. Wales have done alot to promote manufacturing and probably has a fair chunk of the UK production, the whole of the UK should be made mo…

2) - Would not be such a good idea. Remember that a good chunk of these get exported to outside. Raising a protectionist barrier will just encourage other countries to do the same.

The current situation, according to [1], is that there is a higher import tax on components than on assembled boards.

This is, as I understand it, because there's no import duty on components that are part of information technology products such as computers[2] - but components which are not yet part of such a product are subject to import duty.

To fix this we don't need to raise a protectionist import duty for IT products - we can just drop the import duty on electronic components.

[1] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/509 [2] http://www.charleswalker.org/import-duties

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#28

Post by jrockway »

andrewcooke wrote: post #26
oliwarner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree but it's not just wages and taxes. China has everything they need to bleem out consumer electronics indefinitely. They source the materials within China and they produce [most of] the components in China. It's all there under one currency. I love England but we don't really have the rare earth metals required to do this stuff. We need to import them and that means paying China more money. Often mor…

"bleem"?

It's clear from context that it's a perfectly cromulent word.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#29

Post by drone »

I don't understand this statement at all:

"Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us."

Who wouldn't take one project because they were afraid you wouldn't come back for more? Is business so hopping over there that people scoff at a $1M deal because you may not come back later for a $5M deal? Or, were you actually asking them to reserve production, but that you might cancel before it started?

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#30

Post by jcollins1991 »

drone wrote: post #29

I don't understand this statement at all: "Last year, when nobody had heard of the Raspberry Pi, we had been unable to find a British manufacturer whose prices per unit (especially at a point where we were thinking of sales in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands you’re seeing now) would work for us, and who believed that the project would be enough of a success for them to risk line space for us." Wh…

The key point I think is line space. Getting set up for production is quite a bit of work, and given that their new contract is for 30,000/month, the manufacturers clearly didn't want to set up an entire production line if they may only get a couple of months of usage out of it (since the original order would've been only in the tens of thousands).
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