Manufacturing firms in Northern Ireland must embrace resilience and innovation to thrive in today’s challenging economic landscape, according to Alan Lowry, Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) NI Policy Board said ahead of the 2024 Manufacturing & Supply Chain Expo at the TEC Belfast.
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00:00There's no doubt about it that the last few years have been very challenging for
00:04manufacturing businesses in Northern Ireland, particularly small businesses.
00:07All of the issues around Brexit followed by COVID and a number of other issues
00:12about the cost of doing business have really made it very difficult. Northern
00:16Ireland businesses are very resilient so the good thing is that most of them have
00:19looked for workarounds to make them still be able to perform in the way they
00:23should be but there's definitely challenges for them all that we need to
00:26work through. One of the biggest problems with the Windsor Framework and the
00:31Northern Ireland Protocol is it has made it much easier for micro-sized
00:34manufacturing businesses up to 2 million to bring goods in, do what they need to
00:38do to them and put them out again. The problem is most of our businesses are
00:42between 2 to 10 million in the manufacturing sector and it's made it
00:45more difficult for them. All of our goods have to come through the red lane which
00:49means there's additional paperwork and it all gets held up so what we're doing
00:52at the FSB is really trying to lobby hard for these members of ours and other
00:57small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses to make it easier for them to
01:01do this business. The FSB celebrated its 50th anniversary in two weeks time and
01:06from the very start of it we were all about helping single sole traders right
01:10up to medium-sized companies to be able to thrive in the marketplace they're in.
01:15That's right through manufacturers, retail, everything so it's really
01:19important to us to take what our members are saying and make that visible in government
01:23through lobbying, through everything we can do to just make them better
01:27opportunities to do business. I think it's really important that all the
01:30manufacturers make us aware of what the issues are. We've been lobbying hard now
01:34for a number of years on the issues that have been brought to our attention and
01:37we've had some really good success and without the rigorous implementation of
01:42the Windsor Framework yet we still have an opportunity to speak to the EU and
01:46see if we can change some of that mindset and some of that thinking just to make it easier for Northern Ireland
01:51manufacturers to thrive and many of them to survive as well in this current environment.
01:56I think next week's going to be a great open forum where a lot of people are
02:00going to learn things that they didn't even know existed. There's a lot of
02:03technology going on in the background, there's a lot of new things coming
02:06through and it's so difficult to get that information to manufacturers and to
02:10be able to talk about doing stuff collectively. Most of the things that
02:13have been resolved through the Northern Ireland Protocol have been done in
02:16partnership with other companies whether it be freight companies or importers or
02:20export companies so I think next week gives everyone a great opportunity just
02:24to talk in an open forum and learn things that otherwise they might never
02:27have known.