Why British Built Groundscare Machinery is Best

Despite Britain no longer being the manufacturing powerhouse that it once was, our manufacturing sector is currently thriving and contains many world-class companies.

When it comes to high quality machinery sold to the domestic market, Britain has one huge advantage - shipping distance.

The cost of transporting machinery plays a huge role in the design of the product, and the further it has to travel, the more detrimental this becomes for the consumer.

These design choices from international manufacturers negatively impact the machine in many unexpected ways.

The most obvious transportation concern for the designers will be weight. The more it weighs, the more it will cost to ship. Even countries globally renowned for their high standards, such as Germany and Japan suffer from these costs.

With a lot of products this isn’t a problem, and a lightweight design is often preferential. However, when it comes to machinery, this design choice is often a sacrifice of quality, which results in a machine that won’t last as long or work as well.

A good example of this is a garden trailer/cart. There are many imported trailers available, and without close examination one could be fooled into thinking that the trailer is of good quality.

The frame of an imported trailer will be thin. Really thin. Often less than 1mm of steel is used for the structural tubing and box sections.

Contrast this to the UK’s leader in garden trailers, SCH (Supplies) Ltd, whos trailers are constructed out of heavy duty steel sections, with wall thicknesses varying between 3mm and 5mm of solid steel.

The second drawback of shipping a product is the size it will take up.

The majority of imported garden machinery arrives flat packed in order to take up less space. Not only do you have to spend hours assembling, but it severely impacts the durability of the product.

Most British products arrive assembled. This allows the manufacturers to weld steel permanently in place. The strength of fully welded steel is in another league to small bolt connections.

The manufacturing industry in Britain is quite literally a world apart from China. China has the manpower to produce staggeringly more products than us, and the more you produce, the cheaper you can make your product.

A downfall to basing your business model on the number of products built is cutting corners. For example, foreign imports will often have sharp edges, and will use cheap rivets, rather than bolts or weld to secure joints.

Components within the machines also suffer from the same corner-cutting as the finished product, only compounding the potential for future problems.

British engineers have to adhere to thousands of pages of rules, regulations and guidelines that make our products safer to use and much more durable.

We build smaller quantities, but make up for this in significantly higher quality, and our world-class engineers can perfect garden maintenance products best suited to our climate and vegetation.

The last thing to note is the aftercare of the product. A company thousands of miles away does not have concerns about a customer returning an item, whereas a British company is very aware of that possibility.

Chinese manufacturers know that consumers will sooner bin their products than repair them, and so they make little effort to supply parts or adapt their designs to allow replacements.

British products are typically designed to have replaceable parts, and the countries network of thousands of machinery dealers are trained in product aftercare.

Our selection of robust British trailers, waterers, sprayers and more showcase just some of the talent our manufacturing sector has.

God Save the Queen.