Made in the South East awards Round Table

Following the Made in the South East Awards, held in November 2018, Insider held a roundtable event that brought together all the winners, with some of the shortlisted companies. The discussion focused on the growth strategies of the participating manufacturing businesses, investments, aims and objectives, and challenges they are facing.

Our chairman, Made in the South East winner, Roger Kemp, attended the roundtable event and discussed how Focus SB had made the decision to export to China and how it would affect the business in the coming years.

Kemp commented: “We manufacture top-end, metal-plated electrical accessories and 90% of our products are for the UK market. We made a decision to get our switch mechanisms made in China and two years after that decision, we were asked to start bringing our products into China. We’d never sold anything there and had to go through some rigid checks by Chinese authorities but we are now the only UK electrical accessory manufacturer certified to sell products into China. The advantage for us is that we are selling to China, not in China, which means the product is paid for when it leaves the UK factory without having to deal with customs in China – the distributor takes it and does it all”

Kemp continued: “This year China will be our biggest market as the UK is rather stuck at the moment. The rules and regulations of trading in Europe have always been difficult for us but we have had enquiries from European companies that are themselves looking to get into China. So we have increased demand and the only way we can see to meet this new demand is through automation”