The Impact of Covid on UK Manufacturing Firms and Supply Chains: [Stage 1 Report]

The idea for the project came about back in July 2020 when UKRI were inviting applications for research to look at different aspects of the pandemic. The research team, who were working with manufacturing firms at the time, were concerned that little work was being done to investigate the impact of the pandemic on UK manufacturing. And yet there were lots of worrying flags. For a start we were seeing the loss of jobs, we were hearing of challenges in the supply chain, and we were witnessing companies shutting their doors. Every day we were seeing these things on the news and in our dealings with the manufacturing community and through feeds on social media. The team developed a proposal to investigate not just the impact of the pandemic, but to look at future scenarios for manufacturing and the capabilities that will be important going forward.
The paper will focus on Phase 1 of the project, and report on work carried out in the period Nov 2020-April 2021. The report seeks to present evidence of the effects of Covid-19 on UK manufacturing firms and supply chains. It also pulls together in one place a lot of the evidence regarding the impact of the pandemic on the manufacturing sector. As such, the report should be of interest to anyone interested in understanding the current situation with respect to the manufacturing sector