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On a hot summer’s day in Derbyshire, Christopher Nipper worries about getting from Shanghai to his factory in the former mining town of Alfreton.
For three months in the spring and early summer, when the Chinese city was closed due to covid, he had a container full of cloth at the port of Shanghai. Eventually, he paid a further €5,000 (£4,200) to have the cargo airlifted, first to France, then to the East Midlands, just to wait.
“I had customers ordering in March: ‘Where’s my dress? I’m going to delete it.’
Now owned by David Nipper, the family-run business named after his father, which has been making women’s clothing, knitwear and underwear in the city since 1961, is getting closer to home for essential items.
“You can turn three months into one week,” he said. “Think about the environment by saving the energy it takes to bring something around the world. Think about the time saved, the waste avoided, the customer satisfaction.”
More than a third of UK manufacturers have increased the number of suppliers they use in response to severe disruption caused by China’s Covid-19 lockdown and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to research by industry group Mac UK. More than three-quarters of these companies are increasing their use of UK suppliers.
Verity David, director of policy at the manufacturers’ body, said: “The earthquake shocks of the past few years have created a powerful cocktail which has turned business models upside down. “For many companies, this means leaving the ‘when’ behind and embracing the ‘if’.
However, the trend is far from over, with higher production costs and questions over Britain’s ability to meet demand from decades of industrial decline and underinvestment. For many companies – especially those with major markets on the other side of the world – turning to UK suppliers makes little sense.
“Companies need to be close to their customers and suppliers and be sure to meet standards for product quality, availability and cost,” Davidge added.
“Textile skills almost disappeared from Western Europe,” Nipper said. The reason more offshoring hasn’t happened is because there aren’t enough factories to go offshoring.
As companies across Britain struggle with high inflation, business cuts and severe labor shortages, the boss of a clothing manufacturer is taking matters into his own hands with a new attempt to tackle the country’s supply constraints. Or at least Alfreton’s.
Nipper has turned his back on the local school, hoping to invest in the future generation of workers as one of the few business backers of academia in Britain. In the year Renamed the David Knipper Academy in 2016, the school once ranked among the worst in the country and has the sixth highest enrollment in Derbyshire with around 800 pupils.
Like the JCB Academy in neighboring Staffordshire – which is supported by the excavator maker and other businesses including Bentley Motors, Network Rail and Rolls-Royce – the idea is that bringing education closer together will help British industry grow.
“Everybody complains, ‘You can’t find workers.’ Well they just need to go on and do something,” Nipper says. He recognizes that business involvement in education can be controversial (“The city was skeptical. What’s a private employer doing?”), but he says supporting the school is one way to help grow the local economy.
“If you fail the children’s generation, you will fail the economy of the city. If it’s not fixed, it’s a slow burn as they grow up,” he said, describing Alfreton as a “forgotten town” that children want to leave when they grow up. “If a school fails for 10 years, it affects the entire economy, leaving people with less access to education and less aspirations.”
Further progress needs to be made. The school received a “requires improvement” rating from Ofsted in its most recent inspection in May 2019 – although it won praise for the “tireless” work of its headteacher, Catherine Hobbs.
“Kids may not have the same opportunities in other areas, but it’s our job to make that happen,” said Hobbs, who grew up near Alfreton but is one of many who have left. She came back to accept the challenge of turning the school around.
Textiles were once the backbone of the Industrial Revolution, with former mining and mill towns such as Alfreton at the heart of the industry. Today, however, around 3% of the clothes worn in Britain are produced locally. As globalization has allowed manufacturing to be offshored, and advanced economies have shifted to service sector activity, UK manufacturing has shrunk from more than a quarter of the economy in the 1970s to 10% today.
The idea that Britain won’t get things done is one of the many reasons former industrial cities voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. Spying the opportunity, Boris Johnson in 2010 On the Brexit campaign trail in 2016, he visited David Nipper’s factory, where he used sound emissions in the workshop to sew a flag. He cracked jokes about the EU being a “badly designed undergarment” and joked that “Britain cares for everyone who speaks”.
UK exports to the EU fell by 40% in the first month of the Johnson deal. Despite the recovery, the country’s trade performance still lags behind comparable advanced economies. Helping British manufacturing, post-Brexit border problems and red tape are driving up the costs of doing business, while tougher immigration rules have exacerbated labor shortages.
Around the David Nipper factory sites, dotted around Alfreton, there are few non-English sounds to be heard. Nipper said there are some Polish and Lithuanian staff, but there are currently three Ukrainian immigrants at the school. It prides itself on employing a workforce that is predominantly locally born. “It’s much better if you can grow the economy from within the city.”
Nipper has faced disruptions and higher costs since Brexit, but the boss said sales to France and Germany were strong. Because the products are made in Britain, they qualify for zero-tariff status when sold in the EU, unlike clothes originally produced in Asia, which many rivals export. Most British retailers, however, sell clothes made overseas, leading to a decline in UK clothing exports to the EU.
“With Brexit it was difficult to get supply in. With Covid and now with the supply chain problems, you can’t get anything, so we decided to bring it in-house,” explains Nipper.
Despite the optimism, large retailers doubt the possibility of a widespread return to full domestic supply chains. Nipper could sell dresses for around £150 each – reflecting higher wages and production costs – to a mostly older, affluent demographic. But it won’t be affordable for everyone.
Marks and Spencer chairman Arch Norman told the high street giant’s annual shareholder meeting that he wanted to source more products from the UK but said: “The reality is we have to be cost competitive, and we’ve lost the ability to produce locally.” . I don’t think we’ll see it on a large scale. [British clothing manufacturing] Anytime soon,” he said.
With Brexit uncertainty, the coronavirus pandemic and political turmoil at the heart of government, the kind of business investment needed to boost the supply-side capacity of the UK’s industrial base has fallen. Spending remains 10% below pre-Covid levels. The government’s independent economic forecaster estimates a 2% long-term productivity hit from Brexit.
Nipper believes more companies need to get serious about investing in Britain to deal with these headwinds. In recent decades, M&S has been criticized for being part of the problem by offshoreing its supply chain to match fast fashion rivals. Such movements had a major impact on the Midlands and Northern England, historically the home of the textile industry.
When they went ashore, the factories closed and everything fell like a pack of cards.
Things may be starting to change. M&S is trying to produce some Jagger brand clothes in England, while most of its home goods are sold in Wales and half of its own-label beauty products are produced locally.
Consumers are growing more aware of the environmental and ethical consequences of fast fashion. The industry’s carbon footprint is huge, with Oxfam estimating that producing all the jeans owned by Britain has the carbon equivalent of flying a plane around the world more than 2,300 times.
While rebranding could reduce air miles and help British industry, there are concerns that Britain’s traditionally high production costs mean it could be a choice for price-conscious or hard-pressed consumers.
It is a challenge that Nipper must overcome. “The secret to becoming a prosperous country is to start adding value. [through more manufacturing]. But we need great talent.
“You have to solve it slowly. It’s not going to happen all at once. But if we do it all, it will benefit the country as a whole.”
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