East Midlands Economic Growth Report: Northamptonshire – diversity reaps rewards
TheBusinessDesk.com and Barclays have produced an exclusive report and survey on the state of the East Midlands economy, assessing the challenges and opportunities facing the area as it continues to outperform its regional rivals. Read the full report here.
In the final part of our report, Alistair Gough, chief executive officer of Ocee Design, says that Northamptonshire has the perfect economic mix to help it continue to thrive.
MUCH OF the success of the Northamptonshire region is due to the diversity of its businesses. The area is fortunate to have a very good spread of industries from agriculture, manufacturing and service, to distribution and retail. There is also a mix of SMEs and larger companies, with medium size businesses forming the largest portion. The diversity of the business landscape in the county certainly enables the business community to achieve greater success, and the faster growth of the medium sized companies has fuelled recruitment.
Location is of course a big factor; being in the heart of the country is greatly beneficial when attracting business to the region. The excellent road, rail and air network allows easy transportation of goods and people to all areas of the country.
What will Brexit bring?
My feeling is that the UK will become a more export focussed country and we will have greater flexibility to develop a wider and more diverse range of trade agreements across the world, without the same level of bureaucracy that exists within the EU. I believe Britain has a very strong reputation and both EU and other countries will want a mutually beneficial trading relationship. There are of course challenges. My main concern is the negative impact on migration and any difficulties we find attracting the required talent. Controlled immigration is undoubtedly necessary but we need to ensure, as part of our Brexit negotiations, that the UK can still easily attract the required people and talent it needs to enable our economy to grow and prosper. As a manufacturer of commercial furniture our biggest challenge is finding skilled labour for our upholstery department. There are no UK-based training courses or apprenticeships for such a skilled trade. We have therefore recruited a number of highly skilled and excellent workers from Eastern Europe. With the vote to leave the EU, there is a concern about how we will attract EU talent in the future. If it becomes impossible to attract the skills we need, due to migration restrictions, then there is a real possibility that more manufacturing will be driven out of the UK.
Despite this outlook, the opportunities for us to grow and develop our business are still very significant, both within the UK and in the rest of the world. We have just acquired a business in Denmark that operates in Scandinavia, Europe, USA, China and Australia. This acquisition will allow Ocee to grow in existing and new global markets. The acquisition gives us a base and manufacturing facilities in the UK as well as in the EU; this should help us to minimise the impact of Brexit as we can choose our manufacturing site depending upon the political and economic circumstances that develop over the coming years.
Overall, I believe that Northamptonshire will continue to prosper relative to the general economy and the majority of other regions, but there is naturally a degree of uncertainty until a clear picture of the impact of Brexit is known.
