| 12 January 2011 | |
Hardly Ideal... |
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I know it's no laughing matter, but you'd think someone somewhere in the history of Ideal Standard would've thought twice about opening a base in a town called Dole. "It's the perfect site, good workforce, excellent transport links but, well, if at some point in the future we have to make people redundant we're going to look a bit silly."
Dole is in France of course, and is one of three factories that the company has announced is closing. In the UK the ceramics plant in Middlewich is to go and it's the latest blow to a UK sector that can only be described with one of those words journalists like to use but no one else - beleagured.
The Middlewich announcement is a surprise but not a shock, Ideal Standard has been a high profile casualty of a nadir that's affecting the whole UK industry at the moment. It closed a site in Hull in 2006, Cliff Vale in Stoke-on-Trent in 2007, and now Middlewich. While closures are the last resort, the company has also been running temporary shutdowns and cuts in working hours across all its UK sites.
The workers at the remaining lines in Hull, Rugeley and Otley will be feeling very vulnerable today I'm sure, despite the best reassurances of the Ideal Standard top brass.
They're not alone either. Twyford is also closing its Alsager factory, ending a 300 year legacy of manufacturing in Stoke-on-Trent. Jacuzzi UK is cutting its workforce by 15% in another bid to pare down its presence in the country and simply save some money.
It's a shame to say that an inevitable conclusion is that it simply isn't viable to manufacture sanitaryware and many other products in a mass production environment in the UK and many other parts of Western Europe. Short runs of niche products, perhaps, but large volumes, no.
This is a result of the massive market downturn in this area since 2007 of course, and it's no coincidence that the hardest hit are those companies, Ideal Standard and Twyford, who over relied on large contract and construction markets - a bubble that had to burst sometime.
Large European or global companies can't be blamed for having little regard for history or local upsets when this happens. To survive they need to go where the best deals are because if they don't their competitors will. As design becomes universal so can manufacturing. However, as we all know, announcing 249 job cuts means 249 people and families whose lives will be, at best, uncertain and, at worst, devastated.
Take a look at some of the figures Ideal Standard have been quoting to back up their decision:
Between 2007 and 2010 the construction and renovation markets in Europe dropped by 19% in value. In the UK specifically, that figure was 16.8%. The current forecasts for 2012 are not showing a return to pre-downturn levels.
The ceramic sanitaryware sector in Europe has decreased by 23% in volume between 2007 and 2010. For 2013, the sector in Europe is forecast to be 15% smaller than it was in 2007. In the UK it fell by 30.7% and it forecast to be 23% lower in 2013 than 2007.
Anybody know some good news for the UK bathroom industry?
