Today I purchased a large Nylon spoon - for use with non-stick cookware.
On the front of the package i) the union flag ii) Text that says "The best of British" iii) Text that says "Designed in the UK"
On the back in small text "Made in China"
I think it was in India that a town was named Sheffield, so they could put made in Sheffield on the cutlery they produced.
This probably means the tooling and design was here, but actually turning them out is done in China. One might have thought that plastic moulding was something so low in labour costs that it would be cheaper to do them here. Very odd. I remember I had an electric can opener once. Made in UK, but when it went wrong and I looked inside the motor and gear assembly were made in China. This was some years ago, when I could see, so its probably not a new issue at all. I go back to the days when things had Empire Made written on them, ie we must have had an empire then. Made in Hong Kong was often on toys when I was a child.
Brian
Yes, that is right, though which came first I'm not sure. Perhaps we should start naming towns China and Bangladesh. Brian
I have a Jabra headset here, on the controls, a prominent marking of equal size,
"Designed and Engineered in Denmark Manufactured in China"
i.e. not hidden.
Other IT equipment comes under the same for traceability, and apparently avoidance of Chinese spying bugs.
Is your spoon bugged?
If specifications were uk then its probably better quality than similar items left to Chinese spec.
Mike
And occasionally, Made in Kong Hong.
Brian Gaff snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote
That's mad. You wouldn't even save on freight given that the raw nylon would still be coming from china.
Nope.
Nope, it was long gone before you were born.
AIUI, a manufacturer can get exactly the quality ordered from China.
Also (heard on podcast) that for many items the economists/bean counters transport costs are so close to zero as to be negligible. Certainly the $1000 or $2000 for a container from China to Europe isn't much if spread out over the very many plastic spoons that can fit into one container... a million? (trying to visualize ten-by-ten packaged spoons, layer them into boxes -- eh...)
Thomas Prufer
You would think that might apply to really small and light items that can be brought here in huge numbers in a container. But recently I went to a talk by one of those in charge of maintaining the fabric of St.Paul's Cathedral where they have occasionally to replace old stonework, some dating from the time of Christopher Wren. And they are getting some of the new granite and limestone from China. One would think that the cost of transport for huge blocks of stone would be far from negligible, but apparent it's cheaper than getting stone of similar quality from Britain or France. I was very surprised.
Shipping by sea from China to Felixstowe is probably cheaper than shipping by road from Felixstowe to London...given the duty on road diesel.
Cost may be irrelevant. They bought Chinese granite to replace steps some time ago because nowhere else could provide as good a match to what they had already.
You clearly haven't noticed that Corbyn is no longer in any position to be a threat to you daft old gammons.
You should spend a bit more of your ill-gotten gains on some better quality meths. Your current tipple is the reason for your rapid loss of marbles.
Er, is this relevant or germane to the issue in some way? Since it most obviously is not, one is minded to wonder what you have been smoking or perhaps injecting.
Being a trader is very simple. Go on Aliexpress, find a spoon, get manufacturer name, contact them, send artwork for retail packaging, boom - spoon in package, done.
As a trader, I might have a portfolio of a thousand items, and I cannot afford to spend more time on a single acquisition, than the description in the preceding paragraph.
For the trader, the spec is "Yup! Looks like a spoon". If the spoon is ugly, he does not buy it.
It's not the same business model, as when you were a lad.
Paul
The reason that ships are used for the heaviest freight like iron ore, crude oil, cars etc is because once you have it on the ship, it costs bugger all to move it from one side of the world to the other.
Alibaba is even easier.
Of course it is. Didn't you read the drunken berk's signature?
I googled for freight rates, and it seems a 20 ft container is up to 25 metric tons (25000 kg), 40 ft is 27.6 tons. Without actually asking for a quote: it looks like it doesn't matter if the container is lightly or fully loaded...
Thomas Prufer
Perhaps you can combine them: put as much stone to take almost the weight of the container, and then fill the rest up with lightweight plastic spoons. The stone displaces maybe 5% of the spoons. You get to carry the stone for a very small fraction of the cost of a container you were sending anyway.
Theo
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