£3bn designs on innovation in China

It believes UK manufacturing could be competing for a slice of China’s booming design industry, potentially worth more than £3 billion. UKTI chief executive Andrew Cahn says the Chinese economy is developing rapidly. “What we are witnessing is a transformation from Made in China to Designed in China,” he says. The 12 member taskforce – including the strategic product development outfit Smallfry, whose managing director Steve May-Russell will be addressing a meeting of manufacturing leaders next Thursday – is made up of British design companies that have already broken into the Chinese market. It will host seminars in China about the strength of UK design, and share intelligence with the British design community through training and marketing activities. “Chinese companies are moving up the value chain and increasingly looking to sell their products and services outside their own domestic market,” says Cahn. “They’re therefore spending more time and money on creative design, marketing and branding. “The potential market for UK design will develop rapidly as China’s economy moves towards selling more sophisticated products and services into a competitive market place.” Martin Darbyshire, CEO of Tangerine and also a member of the taskforce, says it is wrong to think of China’s economy as being based on low cost, sub-contract, manufacture. “China is evolving quickly into a high tech, high skilled and highly innovative economy,” he says. “It already has the second largest share of science and engineering researchers in the world, and between 2005 and 2010, the country will graduate some three million engineers, nearly nine times the number that will graduate in the United States.” A new report by UKTI, published last week, highlights opportunities for British design in manufacturing and other sectors. Copies are available by contacting Gary Hunt at Gary.Hunt@uktradeinvest.gov.uk To attend a morning Manufacturing Leaders Club briefing on Innovation and Product Development on Thursday, 5 July, visit www.mfgleaders.co.uk The Manufacturing Leaders’ Club is organised by Findlay Publications, and runs in partnership with Cranfield School of Management and EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation. It is operated in association with HP and SAP, and this event sponsor is IBM.