The digital infrastructure gap in UK reshoring
13/08/2026 Getronics Services UK Ltd
The UK’s renewed focus on domestic manufacturing is welcome, but a factory cannot be considered resilient just because it has been built on British soil. Frank Roidl, Senior Key Account Manager at Getronics, explores why digital and operational technology must be treated as core infrastructure from the beginning of any reshoring project.
The renewed interest in bringing manufacturing back to the UK has gathered real momentum. The Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan sets out an ambition to nearly double annual business investment in the sector, with a particular focus on industries including automotive, aerospace, batteries and advanced materials.
For manufacturers, this creates an opportunity to shorten supply chains, develop domestic skills and reduce some of the exposure that comes with relying heavily on overseas production. However, moving manufacturing closer to home does not automatically make operations more resilient.
A great deal of attention is naturally given to the visible parts of any new facility: the site, the production lines, the machinery and the people needed to operate it. Digital infrastructure is still too often treated as something that can be specified later, once the factory design is largely complete and this is an oversight that can end up costing companies dearly.
The systems supporting a manufacturing facility are now inseparable from the facility itself. If the operational technology, networks, business systems and recovery arrangements are not designed into the project from the outset, the business may be building technical debt into a brand-new site.
IT and OT are part of the production line
There is still a tendency to think about cybersecurity as an IT issue, separate from production. On a modern manufacturing site, that distinction is increasingly difficult to make.
The machinery may be operational, but production can still stop because an apparently peripheral system has failed. A manufacturer might be unable to process orders, release a batch, print the right labels, confirm quality checks, arrange transport or tell suppliers which components are required.
None of those systems necessarily controls the machinery itself, yet each one can still prevent finished goods from leaving the site.
The 2025 cyber incident at Jaguar Land Rover demonstrated the scale of this dependency. Production was suspended for approximately five weeks at major UK plants, but the effects extended far beyond JLR’s own operations into suppliers, dealerships, logistics providers and local businesses. The Cyber Monitoring Centre estimated that the incident affected more than 5,000 UK organisations and caused a financial impact of around £1.9 billion.
KP Snacks provides another useful example. Following a ransomware attack in 2022, the company reported disruption to its manufacturing and shipping processes. Retailers were warned that supplies of some products could be affected for weeks. The incident showed how a failure in ordering, communications or distribution can quickly become a production and commercial problem, even where the manufacturing equipment has not been directly attacked.
The immediate loss of production is only one part of the cost. A food or consumer goods manufacturer that cannot keep products on shelves risks losing that space to competitors. Rebuilding the supply position may take longer than restarting the factory. Customer confidence, retailer relationships and future orders can all be affected.
These second-order costs are difficult to calculate in advance, but they are often where the greatest commercial damage sits.
Spend according to risk, not visibility
UK reshoring is expensive and land, energy, equipment and labour costs create understandable pressure to find savings elsewhere in a project.
Digital and OT infrastructure can look like an attractive place to reduce spending because much of it is less visible than a new machine or production line. The return is often harder to demonstrate while everything is working normally, however, the cost of getting it wrong can be catastrophic.
That does not mean every facility needs the most expensive technology available. No business has an unlimited budget, and no amount of investment can remove every risk. The objective should be to understand which risks the company can tolerate and which ones threaten its ability to operate.
We advise our clients to think of it as similar to buying insurance. The most comprehensive policy may offer the greatest protection, but it may not be commercially realistic. The sensible approach is to understand the exposure, decide where the greatest losses could occur and invest accordingly.
For a new or reshored facility, that work needs to begin with the production process rather than with a catalogue of tech products. Which systems could stop the line? What would prevent goods from being dispatched? Where does the site depend on a single application, network connection or specialist? How quickly could each critical system be restored? What would people do if the normal process became unavailable? The answers to these questions should help to shape the technology design and the budget.
In some areas, the right decision may be greater network separation between IT and OT environments. Elsewhere, the priority may be secure remote access, resilient connectivity, tested backups or the ability to run a limited manual process during an outage.
Documentation also matters as recovery cannot depend on one person knowing where a particular piece of information is stored. Processes must be recorded, responsibilities need to be clear and recovery arrangements should be tested under realistic conditions.
Until a recovery plan has been tested in practice, a business cannot be confident it will work when needed.
The factory boundary extends into the supply chain
The same thinking must extend beyond the manufacturer’s own site. Reshoring may reduce geographical distance, but it does not remove reliance on suppliers, logistics businesses, maintenance partners and technology providers. In some cases, it creates a more concentrated domestic supply chain in which several companies depend heavily on one large customer.
Manufacturers therefore need to understand not only whether a supplier can deliver the required component, but how resilient that supplier’s operation is. That does not require intrusive scrutiny of every partner, but it does require sensible questions about critical systems, recovery times, continuity plans and third-party access. Smaller suppliers may not have the same resources as the manufacturer, yet their failure can stop the same production line. This assessment should take place while the supply chain is being designed, not after contracts have been signed and production has begun.
The JLR incident made the economic interdependence of manufacturing particularly visible. The primary cyber incident affected one company, but the disruption spread through thousands of organisations because their operations and revenues were connected.
A chance to avoid old mistakes
Reshoring gives manufacturers a rare opportunity to design facilities without the limitations of a legacy site. It should be used to improve digital resilience, not to recreate the same weaknesses in a newer building.
That means involving IT, OT, security and operational leaders while the facility is still being planned. It means mapping the processes that keep production moving and being realistic about what would happen if one of them disappeared. It also means recognising that digital investment is not separate from production investment.
Government support for reshoring should reflect these requirements and that means success should not be measured only by the number of factories opened or jobs created. A facility that cannot operate reliably, recover from disruption or work securely with its supply chain will struggle to compete, wherever it is located.
Bringing manufacturing back to the UK is a significant opportunity, but it is building the right digital foundations which will allow that opportunity to last.
Print this articleFor more information, please contact:
Frank Roidl
Getronics Services UK Ltd
Huckletree (2nd Floor)
8 Bishopsgate
London
EC2N 4AY
Tel: +44 (0) 870 9068000
Email: info@getronics.com
Web: https://www.getronics.com
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