Alison Orrells, CEO & Managing Director of The Safety Letterbox Company, spoke with Business News Wales to discuss how organisations such as Manufacturing Wales have been aiding in overcoming difficult times, such as the pandemic, offering help from connections to advice, as well as discussing the challenges faced by the sector.
Highlights
- It's vitally important that we talk to one another. We need to understand that the problems that we have are problems that are shared. Collaboration can be vital.
- Through covid we managed to discuss our approaches collaboratively and to share ideas and resources and ways in which we were tackling things. I think in difficult times like we’re experiencing right now, a body like Manufacturing Wales can be extremely useful and give us insights and confidence to continue to build our brand, build our products and to really have that strength, to continue to invest in our bigger picture.
- One of the important things about protecting the UK manufacturing sector is the price pressures. As the price pressures go on and many sectors and buyers are price-driven, only inferior products that are maybe not going to last and cause risks are likely to become more dominant in the market and start to fill out the marketplace
- The huge shift to digital communications disables the ability to explain features and benefits and explain any differentiation between quality fit for purpose, long-lasting product and a cheap non-compliant one.
- Staff are under huge pressures because of cutbacks, but often doing multiple jobs on top of their own
- When the realisation that those products are failing in the industry arrives in a couple of years to come, my fear is then we will have a waste and sustainability crisis
