Alan Lowry

Derry Journal

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.

Transcript

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.

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