We are not a uniform manufacturer, but we are exactly the kind of business the Telegraph article is describing when it calls for the preservation of British textile manufacturing capability.

We are a UK cut and sew manufacturer, producing from our facility in Shipley, West Yorkshire. We hold ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials Plus, JOSCAR and Made in Britain accreditations. We manufacture for the defence sector, bespoke protective covers, specialist enclosures, technical textile solutions, alongside our work across automotive, leisure, marine and industrial applications. Every product leaves our facility made by a skilled British workforce.

The skills our machinists carry, the ability to cut, sew and manufacture to a precise, consistent standard, are the same skills the defence uniform supply chain depends on. They exist in businesses like ours. They are at risk in businesses like ours, for exactly the reasons our MD raised at the working group. And they are worth protecting not as a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of national capability.

This isn’t a position we’ve arrived at because it’s good for business. It’s one we hold because we see the consequences of the skills shortage every single day, in recruiting, in training, in retaining the people whose expertise makes everything we produce possible.

When our MD stood in a room at Toray Textiles earlier this year and heard the same concerns echoed by manufacturers, trade bodies and government representatives from across the sector, it wasn’t a revelation. It was a recognition. We are all experiencing the same pressures. We are all watching the same capability quietly erode. And we all know that the window to act is narrowing.

The true cost of outsourcing essential military textile production is not measured only in the unit price of a garment. It is measured in security risk, quality failure, strategic dependency, and the gradual loss of a manufacturing capability that, once gone, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

We are in the early stages of exploring how we can play a direct role in training the next generation of skilled textile workers, because no amount of procurement policy change will matter if the workforce to deliver it isn’t there.

We will share more on this as it develops. What we can say now is that the argument for investing in British textile skills has never been more clearly or publicly made, and we intend to be part of making it happen.

If you are a defence contractor, procurement professional or manufacturer who shares these concerns and wants to talk about what British textile capability looks like in practice, we would welcome the conversation.

Explore our defence capabilities →