Post-Brexit: New Opportunities, New Markets, New Applications, New Products
So here we are in our ‘apocalyptic’, ‘disastrous’ post-Brexit world just waiting for our businesses to collapse and our markets to disintegrate….
Certainly, that’s what I thought was going to happen. As a staunch ‘inny’, I was convinced that the ‘outies’ had it wrong and the uncertainties surrounding ‘Brexit’ would cause a major economic collapse and Intelliconnect, along with most other companies of our size, would go to the wall. Admittedly Brexit hasn’t actually happened yet, but the post-referendum apocalypse which many (including myself) predicted has not occurred.
For U.K. component and cable assembly manufacturers, the future is looking extremely bright and the reasons are not just about us leaving the E.U.
U.K. consumers (and OEMs) are becoming much more U.K.-centric in their engineering and purchasing decisions. Re-shoring is growing apace, and U.K. manufacturers are responding to demands with ever more flexible and low-cost products.
New market sectors are opening up locally and internationally, particularly in areas like water management, wearables, security, cryogenics, and marine, which are all perfect applications for waterproof connectors. Water is particularly buoyant (really!). While this commodity becomes more and more precious, leak monitoring and flow rate measurement are proliferating, and radio frequency (RF) systems are at the forefront of this technology. In medical, RF ablation, where tumors are ‘zapped’ by high-frequency RF signals, pain and discomfort are reduced while increasing the accuracy of the treatment over traditional laser-based procedures.
Cryogenics with cables working close to absolute zero is another exciting area with enormous opportunities for growth.
Many opportunities are opening up in the defence and aerospace sectors where OEMs, who have traditionally purchased U.S.-manufactured, high performance, military-grade connectors, adapters, and cables, are realizing that U.K-manufactured product a) is less expensive; b) is equivalent or better quality; and c) has no ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) implications.
There are also, of course, an enormous number of export opportunities, particularly in U.S. dollar and Eurozone economies. With a 15 percent drop in the value of the pound, already in the past month Intelliconnect have gained two major export contracts which sterling weakness has helped to push over the line as well as an increased interest from U.K. firms looking to re-source from the U.S. or Europe.
Intelliconnect’s range of Stainless Steel N Type, SMA, TNC, BMA, Millimeter Wave and SMP connectors and adapters, as well as our unrivalled promise to design, build and deliver brand new product in seven to eight weeks, means that Intelliconnect can compete favourably with U.S. and European rivals (given similar volumes) on most products. We are particularly proud of our solderless 2.92mm connector for 0.085 cable, and our PISCES range of IP68 waterproof connectors.
All in all, it’s looking pretty good for manufacturers in our particular sector. I hope, and now believe, that this trend will continue, and that more and more manufacturing will return to the U.K.
Roy Phillips, M.D. owns Intelliconnect (Europe) Ltd. For more information, contact Intelliconnect (Europe) Ltd., +44(0)1245 347145; www.intelliconnect.co.uk.
