Phil Stanley’s business expanded into a new area last week. The West Midlands-based manufacturer punched out locks used to bolt down caravan legs for the first time. A niche operation, perhaps, but it was a part that his client had previously commissioned from a supplier in Asia.
The 52-year-old director of Threeway Pressings recounted how his customer had contacted him and said “this is being made in the Far East and I want to bring it back to the UK”.
In its own small way, Stanley’s new contract could one day be seen as a chapter in a great, tectonic shift in the way the world economy works. For, having seen supply chains become ever more interconnected since the 1990s between factories in the East
