Brexit Benefits - a catalyst to change?

You can try, but you simply can’t escape the news on Brexit. There’s a lot of negativity and anxiety surrounding it, but what about the positives?

With the UK having officially left the European Union on the 31st of January 2020, many businesses headquartered in the UK, just like us have had to take proactive steps to protect their business interests.

It’s not been a time for procrastinating or for the faint of hearted. Instead, it’s been a time to step up, be practical, and build contingency steps regardless of the outcome.

Many UK electronic manufacturing companies have reported on the common Brexit challenges, for example; non-movement in trade, or stockpiling as a security net until whatever solid-state post Brexit is in place. The impact of these actions on many has been detrimental to procurement of parts, forecast planning, and production.

However, within this cloud of uncertainty, we have actually identified a business opportunity to improve our operational performance.

In a bid to control our own destiny, we have put in place several changes to strategically manoeuvre our way through the Brexit chaos, with these learnings resulting in several benefits to Anders, our supply chain, and customers.

Adapt or face the pain

Brexit compelled us to take a long hard look at our business, to assess where our supply chain could be fragile, at risk, or weakened.

When 50% of your business originates in Europe, you need to do what you can to protect current customers, whilst growing future opportunities.

For today’s business, the European market, that is countries outside of the UK, accounts for 50% of our business and is growing year-on-year.

This isn’t to say that we don’t still have a very dominant foothold in the UK for display and embedded solutions, but our UK market can be distinct from the rest of Europe and can be nurtured, developed and grown via Anders headquarters in London, UK.

Brexit can’t become the elephant in the room

You can’t just bury your head in the sand

To cater to our growing European market, we have established Anders Electronics BV. This entity is strategically located in the Netherlands, well-known globally for its logistical excellence and utilised by many of the world leading electronic manufacturing brand names.

By expanding and developing into new geographies, we can now offer our customers choices;

• London, UK – home of product innovation, prototyping and development, with production in various locations in the Far East
• The Netherlands – home of European logistic hub excellence and robust connected supply chain solutions
• Hong Kong – home of Asian logistic hub and world-class supply chain network

Failing to plan is planning to fail

Feedback from our customers has been incredibly positive, with shipment times across Europe being reduced. In an industry where speed-to-market and time-in-profit matters, this is a major benefit.

In setting up these operations, our own efficiency has improved. We have new processes in place which have streamlined our productivity and future-proofed our ability to scale our business in the next few years. We were not prepared to sit and wait with the potential to lose business, so we prepared ourselves, and if nothing changes in the market dynamics, then that is fine too, we’ve not lost anything. We’ve simply built a contingency plan, which will set us on a winning course from now until the next decade, when Brexit becomes a thing of the past.

Extending our global footprint - An Anders home away from home.