Recently in Manufacturing Category

News in the Post today (read Duncan Tift's article here) that Shanghai Auto (SAIC) remains committed to the Longbridge site comes as welcome news given the uncertainty created in the wake of the recently announced StadCo pullout from MG TF production.

That MG TF production will finally restart in July this year also comes as some relief after lengthy delays given concerns over the quality of parts coming from China.

Let's get things in perspective, though. The TF is basically a 15-year old design with nearly all of the parts brought in from China. It is not a sustainable project beyond the very short term. And with StadCo leaving, we now basically see a screwdriver operation with very few linkages into the local economy and fewer benefits than we'd hoped for in terms of economic development.

That Shanghai are going ahead at all is the crucial thing, though. This keeps them interested in a site whether further production and R&D may come in time. It's here where the case needs to be made to SAIC. And there is a strong case to be made.

Things don't look too positive over attempts to restart MG car production at Longbridge. The announcement last week that StadCo is pulling out of producing car bodies (probably because of delays, unecrtainties and limited volumes if and when cars are ever actually made), has left other suppliers wondering what is going on and whether production is now feasible at all.

I'm sure that there have been some people at Nanjing who have been genuine in wanting to restart small scale MG car production at Longbridge. However, it is a small firm with few resources and doesn't really have much of a track record in developing and producing quality cars. It has had 3 years since it acquired MG Rover and has yet to get its act together at Longbridge. Little wonder people are growing increasingly sceptical of it really making a go of this.

Its takeover by Shanghai at the start of this year raised hopes that the bigger firm could now commit resources and bring R&D back to Longbridge. Well, the StadCo pullout has blown a big hole in that plan and urgent answers are now needed as to what is going on.

Ideally, of course, we'd like to see car manufacturing and R&D come back to Longbridge. It's just that many are wondering if this will ever happen.

Before I begin, I apologise for my inexcusable absence, a combination of too many ideas, not enough time and IT incompetence on my part. However, hopefully I will have learnt from the experience...unlikely!

China, China, China. I have never been and would like to, it seems a lovely place, or at the very least interesting after the latest report on pollution in Beijing.

With the Olympics, they suddenly seem to have become the country to be talked about. Whether it is pollution, human rights, sports, foreign investment, China is the country we want to talk about.

Or do we? Well you answer that question for me...but here are a few of my musings on the subject.

Specifically, one: do we have the right to lecture the Chinese on pollution?