Ten years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, UK manufacturers have learned to live with Brexit. But while the sector has proved remarkably resilient, business leaders say it has come at a price. The Manufacturer’s James Devonshire spoke to senior figures from across British manufacturing to explore how Brexit has reshaped industry and what comes next.

Key takeaways:

  • Brexit is now a business reality, not a political debate: A decade on, manufacturers have stopped debating the referendum and are focused on operating successfully within the post- Brexit trading environment.
  • Red tape has replaced frictionless trade: While tariffs have largely been avoided under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, customs paperwork, regulatory compliance and border administration have become the biggest challenges for exporters.
  • Resilience came at a significant cost: UK manufacturers adapted and continued to grow, but many diverted time, investment and management attention away from innovation and productivity simply to maintain business as usual.
  • Policy certainty matters more than politics: Manufacturers consistently say long-term stability, a clear Industrial Strategy and predictable regulation are now more important than revisiting the Brexit debate.
  • The next decade must focus on competitiveness and growth: Having absorbed the initial disruption, manufacturers want fewer barriers to trade, stronger UK-EU cooperation and a stable business environment that allows them to invest and compete internationally.

On 23 June 2016, the UK voted by 52% to 48% to leave the European Union, setting in motion one of the most significant political and economic shifts in modern British history. A decade later, the political arguments remain as divisive as ever, but inside Britain’s factories the conversation has changed. For manufacturers, Brexit is no longer a political question; it’s an operational reality.

The last ten years have brought customs declarations, rules of origin, regulatory divergence, labour shortages and a level of uncertainty few business leaders could have anticipated. Yet those same ten years have also included a global pandemic, supply chain disruption, an energy crisis, soaring inflation and geopolitical instability, making it almost impossible to isolate Brexit’s impact from the wider economic turbulence.

However, while some manufacturers have reported growth in non-EU markets, Brexit’s impact on UK trade has been significant. According to the Centre for European Reform’s John Springford and Anton Spisak, goods exports to the EU are about 16% lower than if the UK had chosen not to leave and goods imports are 14% lower.

Despite those headwinds, Britain’s manufacturing sector has continued to invest, innovate and export. According to Make UK, manufacturing still contributes more than £220bn in gross value added to the UK economy each year and supports around 2.6 million jobs, underlining its importance to national prosperity.

What emerges from conversations with manufacturers across the sector is neither a tale of catastrophe nor one of unqualified success. Instead, it is a story of adaptation.

Living with the new ‘normal’

Perhaps the most striking aspect of speaking to manufacturers a decade after the referendum is how little appetite there is to revisit the vote itself.

“Ten years on from the Brexit vote, businesses have to deal with the reality rather than continue debating the decision itself,” said Christopher Greenough, Managing Director of Westley Engineering.

“The British public made its choice, and whether individuals voted leave or remain, we cannot spend another decade looking backwards. The focus now has to be on making the UK’s position as competitive and prosperous as possible.”

That sentiment is echoed across the manufacturing sector and the wider supply chain. Manufacturers who actively opposed leaving the trading bloc have found themselves with no option but to restructure their operations to match the new regulatory environment.

“As an SME manufacturing business exporting 70% of our turnover – 50% of which is to the EU – we did not see any benefits in leaving the trading bloc,” said Chris Walker, Chief Executive of Diamond Hard Surfaces. “Nevertheless, we embraced Brexit as an opportunity, despite our reservations and being pro-remain.”

Similarly, Rebecca Galley, Chief Executive of Tornado Wire, highlighted that operational continuity leaves no room for ideological debate. “Ten years on, I think it’s important to separate the politics of Brexit from the practical reality of running a manufacturing business,” she reflected. “I remember the referendum result vividly… Whatever people’s views then or now, manufacturers had little choice but to adapt to the new environment that followed.”

It is this spirit, which we’ve seen time and time again in recent years in the face of adversity, that perfectly encapsulates the British manufacturing industry. Whatever their political views, the immediate necessity of keeping production lines moving, maintaining client trust and securing orders in a vastly altered commercial landscape has taken priority.

Christopher Greenough, MD, Westley Engineering.

Friction at the border

For decades, British manufacturers enjoyed frictionless access to their largest export market. Brexit supporters promised that leaving the single market would deliver a bonfire of red tape. The daily reality for exporters, however, has been the exact opposite.

Today, while tariff-free trade remains possible under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the reality of trading with the UK’s closest geographical market is now one that requires an unprecedented volume of administration, documentation and logistical planning.

Adam Hooper, Chairman and Director at Martin’s Rubber Company, offered stark, practical examples of how administrative barriers disrupt everyday business relationships. “Try sending zero-value exhibition samples into the EU to support your staff on a trade stand. You may as well not bother as the parts will never clear customs in time,” he said.

Furthermore, the operational friction extends directly into commercial contracts. Adam cited a warning from a key Italian customer: ‘In order to continue placing business with you, we need you to get our parts into Bologna Customs three days before we need them on our site, or we will need to resource from inside the EU.’ Situations like this appear to be widespread, regardless of manufacturing vertical.

Chris Walker told us that Brexit has eroded the speed and agility of doing business with Europe that British manufacturers once enjoyed. “It now takes longer to ship a package to France than it does to the US, and we are having to deal with the cost associated with importing documentation and customs clearance for all EU transactions,” he said.

“Prospective reduced legislation and administrative burden was enticing, as was the opportunity to strike new trading relationships with countries with which the EU had failed to do so. Unfortunately, many of the promised benefits haven’t materialised; the reality is that in order to trade with other blocs or countries you also need to adhere to their regulations and rules,” he added.

For specialised manufacturers like Bridgnorth Aluminium, coping with this reality has required direct organisational expansion. Adrian Musgrave, Head of Sales, said: “Prior to the leave vote, there were obviously no tariffs into the EU, whereas now there is a lot more complexity involved. We have procedures to go through, and we’ve had to expand the shipping team to cope with that. The frictionless trade that we had prior to Brexit just isn’t there anymore.”

For advanced materials company, Goodfellow, the response was to redesign the business around the new trading environment. Rather than exporting the majority of European orders directly from its Huntingdon headquarters, the company now serves most EU customers through its German subsidiary, with French customers supplied through its domestic French operation. According to CEO Simon Kenney, the shift keeps transactions domestic from the customer’s perspective, removing much of the border friction they would otherwise experience, even though it has added considerable operational complexity behind the scenes.

John Pearce, Chief Executive of Made in Britain, summarised the collective sentiment: “Brexit has certainly changed how British businesses trade with customers and suppliers in Europe, in that it has become more complex and a weightier administrative burden for hardworking manufacturers who now face more red tape than they did previously. Trading with the EU has become much harder, and that has forced many to look elsewhere or change their plans for growth.”

The cost of standing still




Brexit has not stopped Tornado Wire from growing.

When discussing Brexit’s economic toll, attention often focuses on direct costs like tariffs, customs fees, freight rates and currency fluctuations. But the biggest cost, for many manufacturers, has been far less visible or measurable. Rebecca Galley describes it as “the cost of standing still”.

Following the referendum, Rebecca was leading a hydraulics business that sourced most of its materials from continental Europe. Rather than investing in productivity improvements or product development, management found themselves immersed in learning entirely new customs systems simply to keep goods moving.

“The biggest cost wasn’t a line on the P&L,” she explained. “It was management attention. Hundreds of hours that could have been spent improving productivity, developing new products or growing export markets were instead spent navigating new processes, paperwork and changing regulation. None of that created value for customers. It was necessary work, but it was unproductive work.”

Simon Kenney described a similar experience from a different perspective. Rather than firefighting individual customs issues, Goodfellow has had to build permanent compliance capability into its European operations. “The single biggest consequence has been the permanent addition of a compliance layer to everything we do in Europe,” he said. “Customs declarations, rules of origin paperwork, VAT complexity and regulatory divergence are now simply part of the cost base of trading with the EU.”

This loss of bandwidth was particularly severe for SMEs, where senior executives often wear multiple operational hats. Every hour spent decoding rules of origin or setting up economic operators registration and identification (EORI) numbers, was an hour stolen from R&D, capital investment planning or customer acquisition.

Like many manufacturers, Tornado Wire invested heavily in preparing for the replacement of CE marking, only for the government to reverse course and continue recognising CE certification. “Businesses responded to government policy in good faith,” Rebecca said, “and then found much of that effort had been unnecessary.”

This reality underlines a wider concern expressed throughout the industry which is that while manufacturers can adapt to change, they need confidence that policy will remain consistent long enough for those investments to pay off. If bureaucracy became the hidden cost of Brexit, uncertainty became its lasting legacy.

Planning beyond politics

Investment in production lines, automation equipment and factory expansions are measured not in months but decades. Because manufacturing involves longterm planning, many have argued that political turnover and shifting economic policies have proved almost as disruptive as Brexit itself. Ironically, during the creation of this feature, Andy Burnham took over the reins of the world’s fifth largest economy, becoming the UK’s seventh Prime Minister in the decade since the Brexit referendum.

“Businesses make investment decisions over five, ten or even 20-year horizons, yet we’ve seen a revolving door of Prime Ministers, changing priorities and shifting economic policies,” Christopher Greenough said. “Manufacturers don’t expect governments to solve every problem, but they do need consistency. Stable leadership, a clear Industrial Strategy and long=term commitment to strengthening our trading relationships would do far more to encourage investment and growth than another change in direction every couple of years.”

John Pearce echoed this perspective regarding the regulatory climate. “Businesses can work within different regulatory environments provided expectations are clear and consistent. What matters most is certainty,” he argued. “Stable, proportionate regulation enables businesses to innovate with confidence, invest for the long-term and compete successfully in international markets.”

Rebecca Galley emphasised that policy stability is vital as UK factories navigate broader macroeconomic headwinds: “Brexit is no longer the only challenge affecting competitiveness. High energy costs, uncertainty around tariffs, an increasingly complex regulatory environment and rising employment costs all influence investment decisions today.

“Manufacturing is a long-term business. We make investment decisions over decades, not political cycles, so stability, consistency and a clear Industrial Strategy matter enormously.”

Built to adapt

Despite regulatory hurdles, administrative friction and policy instability, the defining characteristic of UK manufacturing over the past decade has been its sheer resilience. Faced with fundamental disruptions to how they buy, build and sell, British factories did what they have done throughout the history of industry: they adapted.

“Today, in my current role, our business is performing strongly and this year will be a record year,” Rebecca Galley revealed. “Brexit has not stopped us growing. Good manufacturers adapt; that’s what they do. But it would be disingenuous to pretend it hasn’t made business harder.”

However, she added a crucial caveat regarding the sector’s perseverance: “If Brexit has taught our organisation anything, it’s that UK manufacturers are remarkably resilient. Faced with new barriers, they found ways around them. Faced with uncertainty, they continued to invest, innovate and grow. But resilience should not be mistaken for evidence that everything worked well.”

Chris Walker painted a similar picture of commercial agility at Diamond Hard Surfaces. “Despite the changes, the business has adapted and thrived, and we have never exported to more countries,” he said, demonstrating that agility and international expansion remain achievable despite increased operational friction.

Simon Kenney added that Goodfellow’s experience demonstrates that resilience has sometimes meant restructuring rather than simply persevering. Investment has increasingly been directed towards strengthening operational capability within Europe, including additional systems, compliance expertise and infrastructure in Germany and France. While the company continues to invest in the UK, Simon said growth planning is now based on a more geographically distributed operating model than existed before Brexit.

Adrian Musgrave described a different form of adaptation. For Bridgnorth Aluminium, while EU sales have become harder, changes in global trade policy have opened up valuable transatlantic opportunities.

“A US-UK trade agreement helped us land a five-year deal to supply battery grade aluminium to Lotte Aluminium Materials USA,” he said. “It was five years in the making and what helped us land the deal was the fact we have a lower tariff in the US than many of our competitors.” Musgrave added that the deal will secure jobs, and may lead to the creation of more roles, while it also boosts the Bridgnorth economy by getting the local community spending.

Nevertheless, even those expanding globally recognise that Europe cannot be replaced. “Europe remains our largest trading partner,” said Galley. “We buy from Europe, we sell into Europe and we have European shareholders. That commercial reality hasn’t changed. What has changed is the amount of administration, compliance and bureaucracy required to do exactly the same business we were doing before.”

Christopher Greenough underlined the importance of this strategic balance: “For manufacturers, the priority should be strengthening trade with our closest and largest market. Europe will always be a vital trading partner and reducing unnecessary barriers while improving cooperation should be a key objective. At the same time, we should continue developing relationships with new global markets, but not at the expense of our European neighbours.”

Yet Simon Kenney believes Brexit has become only one element of a much broader competitive landscape. “Freight costs, global supply chain volatility and tariff costs weigh at least as heavily on our competitiveness today as Brexit-related friction,” he said, arguing that while the additional cost of trading with Europe remains a structural disadvantage, much of the initial disruption has now been absorbed into everyday operations.

Chris Walker, Chief Executive, Diamond Hard Surfaces.

A decade of lessons

Ten years after the referendum, the verdict from manufacturing is more nuanced than either side of the political debate might prefer.

Few businesses deny that Brexit has made trading with Europe’s single market more administratively complex. Indeed, for many exporters, frictionless trade has become a thing of the past. Yet neither has Brexit defined the sector’s future.

Manufacturers have adapted, diversified their export markets, invested in resilience and, in some cases, discovered new commercial opportunities. Britain’s reputation for engineering excellence, innovation and high-quality production remains intact, even if the route to market has become more complicated.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of the past decade is not about Brexit itself, but about the character of British manufacturing. As John Pearce puts it: “British manufacturing is at its strongest when it looks forwards rather than backwards.”

He attributes the sector’s endurance to the underlying value of British engineering. “Ten years after Brexit, UK manufacturing is more confident in its strengths, more resilient in its outlook and increasingly recognised for the quality, innovation and trust that British manufacturing brings to customers,” he said.

That may ultimately prove the defining legacy of Brexit’s first ten years. Not that it transformed British manufacturing for better or worse, but that it tested the sector’s ability to adapt under extraordinary circumstances. Having weathered political upheaval, a pandemic, global supply chain disruption and economic volatility, manufacturers are no longer asking whether Brexit was the right decision.

Simon Kenney believes that, after a decade of adjustment, manufacturers have finally reached a point where they can focus on growth rather than constant change. “Ten years after Brexit, UK manufacturing is more resilient, more internationally minded, and finally operating with the stability to plan for growth rather than manage constant change,” he said. “Though there’s still work to do to remove the friction that remains.”

The debate over Brexit may never be settled, but for manufacturers, the next decade will be defined less by the decision itself than by whether Britain can create the stable, competitive environment they need to thrive.