Niche Producers Find Hot Prospects Inside The Machine

IN A cramped and anonymous workshop opposite a housing estate in the Isle of Man, a handful of people supervise Hi – tech pressing machines that stamp out minuscule metal parts that form the key components of control switches for electric kettles.

The parts are produced according to a secret formula and are the sensors that recognise when water has boiled in an electric kettle and switch the device off virtually instantly.

The workshop is the nerve centre of Strix, a privately owned company that makes about two-thirds of the world’s output of control switches for electric kettles. An operation with sales last year of about £85m, Strix recently celebrated the manufacture of its billionth kettle control.

It is difficult to imagine a bigger contrast between the tranquillity of the sparsely populated island off the north- western coast of England and China’s Pearl River delta — the hub of much of the world’s manufacturing. There, in a large, modern factory on a bustling industrial park close to Guangzhou, another team of Strix workers assemble the components shipped from the Isle of Man, with other less crucial parts made in China, to make the controls.

The main reason the metal components continue to be made on the Isle of Man, even though much of the company’s production has been moved to China in the past decade, is to protect Strix’s intellectual property (IP). Strix has spent decades developing its product but fears losing its formula to Chinese competitors if this part of the production process was moved to Guangzhou.

“IP is important to us and it seems safer to keep this part of Strix’s operations in a place where we know we can control it,” says Paul Hussey, Strix CE.

Strix’s success in kettle controls — which it sells to the makers of the 60-million kettles globally produced last year, nearly all of which are produced in China — makes it a prominent member of an unusual but growing group of companies. These are makers of “embedded product enhancers” ( EPEs): devices or materials based on novel technologies, and which transform the function of the appliances they are used in.

Rather than being sold to consumers, these “enhancers” are invariably hidden from view. The only way, normally, to inspect a Strix control is to smash a kettle into pieces.

For this reason, many of the makers of the enhancing devices are “invisible champions”, little known outside their specific sectors.

News Source: www.businessday.co.za