There is a trend, European and UK moulding companies are moving to other destinations for mold sourcing and are also moving back to their base location.

Chinese mold manufacture has so many opportunities and challenges. Cultural and language barriers along with the distance can make mold sourcing here more of a challenge than some molding companies can manage successfully.

The exchange rate effect has reduced the buying power of the Pound by 20%, with that and the increased demand from their domestic market, the opportunities are not as easy to find these days.

Many molding companies are now turning to Eastern Europe as a “Best Cost” sourcing solution and realizing savings that return a better overall project cost with many advantages:

• Reduced supply chain costs
• Reduced delivery times
• Similar purchase costs
• European standards of quality the norm
• Flights of 2 hours or less reduce time out of the office and a make a significant reduction in un-budgeted costs
• If you have very large or heavy molded parts that you need urgently the cost of airfreight from China will be unacceptable, typically anything weighing over 5-6 tones will make the delivered costs higher than if it were manufactured in the UK
• Today, UK and Eastern European manufacture provide and ideal mix of quality and delivered costs
• With the correct skill sets good savings can be made from China and also quickly lost

For many years we’ve all fallen over ourselves to get the lowest mold price and not looked at the true cost of purchase. The Germans have never done this and surprisingly they have a thriving manufacturing base and an economy that is pretty envious in the current situation.