Following the recent Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) ruling and the provisional measures being imposed on imports of glass containers from China, Pattesons Glass Managing Director, David Mann, has shared his concerns about the potential impact on UK glass distributors, their customers and the wider glass packaging industry.
David comments:
“We are extremely disappointed by the recent Trade Remedies Authority finding and the provisional measures being imposed on imports of glass containers from China.
Pattesons Glass has worked with Huaxing Glass for more than 12 years. This is not a short-term relationship driven by temporary pricing. It is a trusted, long-standing partnership built around quality, reliability and security of supply for our UK customers.
But Huaxing is only one part of our supply network.
We have a strong and valued relationship with a UK glass manufacturer, alongside established partnerships with manufacturers across the globe. This diversity allows us to source the right products, specifications, volumes and capacity to meet our customers’ requirements.
We buy British glass and will continue to do so.
However, over recent years we have approached UK manufacturers about increasing our domestic supply and, on occasions, have been told directly that they simply did not have the capacity to work with us.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Pattesons has previously been offered glass sourced from the Far East through UK glass manufacturers themselves.
This raises an obvious question.
If UK manufacturers have not always had sufficient capacity to meet demand, and overseas glass has itself been used to supplement UK supply, is it right to impose substantial additional costs on independent British businesses that have developed legitimate, long-standing international supply relationships?
We are also concerned by the apparent contradiction between claims of material injury from imported glass and the healthy profitability being reported in the publicly available accounts of parts of the UK glass manufacturing industry.
We accept that profitability alone does not determine whether dumping has occurred. But when material injury is being claimed, surely the financial performance of the businesses concerned deserves proper consideration.
Pattesons supports British manufacturing. But protecting one part of British industry should not mean damaging another.
Pattesons is a British business. We employ people here, pay taxes here, invest here, hold substantial stocks here and supply businesses throughout the country.
We are part of the British glass packaging industry too.
Our responsibility is to our customers — providing choice, quality, competitive pricing and, crucially, security of supply.
Sometimes that comes from our UK manufacturing partners. Sometimes it comes from our established partners elsewhere in the world.
A healthy and resilient UK glass packaging market needs both.
We will continue to engage constructively with the TRA, but we believe the wider consequences of these measures for UK distributors, customers, employees and competition deserve much greater consideration.
Supporting British manufacturing and supporting successful British distributors should not be mutually exclusive.
In seeking to protect one part of the UK glass industry, we must be very careful that we do not inadvertently damage another”.
