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Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

raspberrypi.org

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Maybe a better way to tackle this would be to balance things up by imposing a weight based import duty that we shall call the enviromental TAX. This would be the way to address this and also balance out the whole import/export aspect, especialy if every country sat down and looked it from a impact perspective. But in a way that if you import a product in component and in part form that they both at least cost the same import TAX wise, that would be a start at least.

But at the very least the current situation is only accomodating with large plants like Sony's who are able to talk to goverments about TAX breaks and deals to actualy make a plant and the cost of import viable. This needs to be addressed as a whole and allow even medium sized companies to compete, so that even little people have some hope.

Sadly until enough people that people listern to speak up this situation will just stagnate on as it is. I'm full of hope this news item may eventualy put some momentum behind the needed changes and at the very least get them on the table in goverment so they start to look at the issues.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#43
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.

Hmmm, you raise a fair point in that, when you look at the import/export tax offset then its a whole new area in regards to importing compenents and manufacturing in the UK and then exporting. Not sure if import/export TAX works like VAT in that you can offset VAT you pay against what you charge, though I suspect paying import TAX and then exporting that item and expecting some kind of offset would make sence.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#44
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…

Margins. In other words if cost of sales is high enough (and it usually is for large/old b2b) then working with small time customers is net negative revenue.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#46
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)

That's not a problem, if you drive on it at 2am.

It was last week; I had to go 20 minutes through Bristol to go from the M5 to the M4 as they had closed the entire junction :(

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure of that with the currently absurd amount of roadworks on the M4 ;)

Being infatuated with Top Gear, I have to imagine your name means you are an AI that James May built to do the boring things humans do like spend time online while he's away in the garage or doing another special on planes. Therefore, with you being an extension of Mr May, I have to say I agree with your proposal to charge councils by the minute for not having roadworks done properly. Imagine how well funded the Rasp…

Haha, I do share the same surname & hair style so you're not too far off!

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#48
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that this is something that needs to happen eventually. If the world keeps paying China to make everything they will end up owning us all. On paper they probably already do. That's too pessimistic. Broaden your horizon away from the British (and perhaps US) example. The German economy is doing fine for manufacturing, but they have no qualms about importing from China at all.

Manufacturing in the US is also very strong, might even be the highest it's ever been. The, so called, problem is that it doesn't really hire as many people as it used to due to automation.

Yes. I was complaining more about the attitude than about the actual situation.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That is the key thing I question and makes me wonder about EMS in the UK. There are literally dozens of vendors who would kill for that job here in the States - even without any guarantee of repeat order. There just must not be very many there in the UK. (I do understand some of what it takes to setup and run a manufacturing line, I work with several EMSes both in the US and China and run a [smaller scale] electronic…

drone, does 30 workers needed for 30,000 units a month for this makes sense ? it seems pretty high for an automated process.

Re: Raspberry Pi moves manufacturing to the UK

#50

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…

This is true for everything except the actual electronics. There are a handful of fabs for small bits in China, and factories that make discrete components. But almost without exception serious semiconductor manufacture happens elsewhere. To be fair, often that "elsewhere" is Japan, Korea or Taiwan, which are much closer to a Chinese production chain than a British one.
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