In a cavernous factory in Rochdale, Lancashire, a group of workers is putting the finishing touches to high-tech machine tools used to make vital parts for giant cannons used by the US military. In a separate plant half an hour’s drive away near Halifax, West Yorkshire, another engineering team is assembling large machines used in the oil, road-building and aerospace industries.
The 180 people in the two operations – formerly part of two of Britain’s most famous machine tool makers – are now part of the business empire of Chongqing Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, one of China’s biggest state-owned holding companies.
This example of the shifting patterns of industrial globalisation has come about through the £20m ($31m) acquisition in April of Precision Technologies Group, a UK-based business mainly active in machine tools, by Chongqing Machinery & Electric Company.