The UK’s largest fibreglass factory is set to close imminently, threatening 250 jobs.
A subsidiary of the Japanese company Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), Electric Glass Fiber UK – based in Wigan – provides glass fibre for electric cars and wind turbines.
NEG reported losses of £12 million last year, caused by high energy costs. Competition with Chinese glass fibre imports into Europe is also a factor.
Britain’s industry is getting squeezed: high energy costs, lack of government investment and reliance on foreign capital; and a mounting trade war between the world powers.
Meanwhile, Starmer has finally launched Labour’s “long-awaited and delayed” industrial strategy (Financial Times’ words).
The ‘plan’ aims to increase growth and investment in eight ‘key industries,’ such as advanced manufacturing. The ‘strategy’ even claims that the UK will become a leader in electric car technology, amongst other things.
Yet, pressed by their desperate need to ‘balance the books’, Labour are refusing to bail out Electric Glass UK. How exactly, then, is the UK going to provide this essential engineering material for the electric cars it will supposedly be developing?
Even under this ‘plan’, energy prices – the cause of Electric Glass UK’s demise – will remain less competitive than much of Europe!
The crisis of British capitalism isn’t going to be solved by any politician’s ‘strategy’. It can only be solved through the expropriation of the banks and monopolies – and the mobilisation of their resources in a planned economy under democratic workers’ control.
