Vernacare, a pioneer of sustainable infection prevention solutions in healthcare, is transferring £4.2 million worth of surgical instrument operations from China to the UK, creating 12 new jobs across two sites in England and Wales.
The move is expected to save the company, which already manufactures 80% of its products in the UK, around £300,000 a year. It will also reduce the number of containers that must be imported from China by 10%, removing 28 tonnes of CO2e from the firm’s carbon footprint each year.
The move is part of a wider commitment by Vernacare to UK manufacturing, with the result that the majority of Vernacare’s sales are products currently manufactured at the company’s five sites across the UK. Moving production of surgical instruments back from China has been made possible by expanding capacity at the firm’s Newtown, Wales, and Worksop, England facilities.
Alex Hodges, CEO of Vernacare, said: “With the vast majority of our products made in Britain, we pride ourselves on being a UK manufacturer. Transferring a significant part of production to the Newtown and Worksop facilities is part of our mission to make as many of our single-use infection control instruments as possible at home. Not only does this reduce our impact on the environment and underline our confidence in the British economy, but it also makes sound business sense.”
The Women’s health portfolio will be bolstered with additional manufacturing in Newtown, creating four new jobs. Scissor sterilisation and packing will now take place at Worksop, creating eight additional roles. The tools and machinery from China are currently being installed, to enable production to restart.
Commenting on the trend among manufacturers to bring some parts of production back to the UK as part of a ‘reshoring’ process, Hodges noted: “Offshoring manufacturing to China and other countries became popular in recent years, largely due to the perception of reduced costs. Yet when factoring for the navigation of legislation, volatile supply chains, and the unstable geopolitical landscape, British manufacturing often makes greater business sense.”
“What’s more, being closer to the production process gives us a much greater degree of control over the quality of our products, and provides the agility needed to respond to changing customer needs. For all these reasons and more, Vernacare is proud to continue to back British manufacturing”, Hodges continued.
For more information visit: https://vernacare.com/
