It may be a post-industrial world out there these days, with fewer and fewer people employed in manufacturing, but nobody seems to have told our friends in China.
The latest evidence of an emerging Chinese revolution in West Midlands industry is the £30 million takeover of Covpress, the former radiator giant and one of the oldest manufacturers in the region.
Chinese automotive supplier Shandong Yongtai is taking a 70 per cent stake in the Coventry body panel maker, with Telford tyre firm TIA Treadsetters sealing the deal.
Covpress is a significant regional employer, with 454 people at its plant in Canley. It supplies the likes of Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Renault and has been around for 123 years.
As TIA chairman Peter Smith points out, the takeover enables the Telford firm to take advantage of investment from the fastest-growing economy in the world while the Chinese tap into West Midland knowhow. Of course, the Chinese have previous in this region. As long ago as July 2005, Nanjing Automobile snapped up the assets of MG Rover for £53 million following the closure of Longbridge. Today, MG UK – now under the ownership of Chinese firm SAIC – employs around 400 people churning out MGs.
In 2009 the assets of another renowned West Midland manufacturer, van-maker LDV, were bought by Chinese businesswoman Qu Li. The LDV Maxus-style van, once a proud Washwood Heath product, has been revived by SAIC, with orders as far afield as Australia.
Chinese carmaker Geely has bought the collapsed Coventry black cab maker Manganese Bronze for £11 million while Guangdong-based NVC unveiled a new £5 million lighting factory at Rubery in 2011 at the same time as the University of Birmingham launched a joint research centre in Guangzhou.
Perhaps most significantly of all, Jaguar Land Rover’s biggest market is now China, a key factor in the UK’s single biggest industrial success story of recent years. Our politicians may pontificate endlessly about EU membership, but the wealth-creating China Syndrome is not going to go away any time soon.
