Manufacturing
Sectors
A plant is measured on what it makes. It is audited on what it can evidence: the technical file, the declaration of conformity, the batch record, the surveillance record, the return that was due on the first of the month.
The state of the industry
Two regimes, several registers, and a calendar that no longer has a quiet quarter.
Conformity marking is now a standing choice rather than a transition. Great Britain continues to recognise CE marking alongside UKCA indefinitely across the main product regulations, which sounds like simplification and is not: it means deciding per product line and maintaining the technical file and declaration of conformity that go with whichever route is taken. The flexibility allowing the UKCA mark to sit on a label or an accompanying document ends on 31 December 2027, after which it goes on the product itself for most sectors, which makes it an artwork and documentation project rather than a compliance note.
Producer responsibility now has its own calendar. Large producers report packaging data twice a year, with the July to December data due on 1 April and the January to June data due on 1 October, and register annually by 1 October. Year two fees rose against year one across most materials, and fee modulation by recyclability assessment begins in the 2026 to 2027 year with escalating factors over three years. The reporting is granular, and it is the sort of granular that a plant manager cannot do from memory in the last week of March.
Since 31 January 2025 goods imported from the European Union have needed a safety and security declaration, on a dataset of twenty mandatory fields. From 1 January 2027 the UK carbon border adjustment mechanism applies to specified imports of aluminium, cement, fertiliser, hydrogen and iron and steel, with businesses importing fifty thousand pounds or more of those goods in a twelve-month period directly in scope.
And the records outlast almost everyone who creates them. Health surveillance records under the COSHH Regulations are kept for at least forty years from the last entry, with the name, the processes worked on, the exposure history and the results. Reportable injuries and diseases under RIDDOR are kept for three. Since 31 March 2025 workplaces in England with ten or more employees have had to separate dry recyclables and food waste, which is a waste transfer and contract administration duty as much as an operational one.
The standard
Judged on the evidence, like everything else here.
We do not claim to have run a production line. What transfers is the discipline behind the documentation: procedures written down, dates met, records complete before anybody asks. A pilot is judged on evidence you can check rather than on our account of it.
The work
- Conformity documentation. Technical files assembled and kept current, declarations of conformity issued and version-controlled against the product line.
- Producer responsibility reporting. Packaging data gathered through the period rather than in the fortnight before it is due, and filed against the reporting deadline.
- Quality and non-conformance records. Batch and traceability records maintained, non-conformances logged, corrective actions chased to closure and evidenced for audit.
- Health and safety recordkeeping. Surveillance and incident records kept to their statutory retention periods, in a state an inspector can be shown without a week of preparation.
- Procurement and supplier administration. Purchase orders raised and acknowledged, deliveries reconciled, supplier documentation collected and kept in date.
- Scheduling and customer order administration. Production and maintenance scheduling support, order acknowledgements, and the correspondence that surrounds both.
The software stays yours
Your ERP, your quality management system and your maintenance planner stay where they are, and our people work inside them on accounts you issue. Nothing is exported and nothing is migrated. Which systems, and which parts of them, is settled in the engagement.
What changes for your team
The people who understand the process stop maintaining the paperwork that describes it. Files are complete before the audit is booked, returns go in ahead of the date, and the quality manager spends the month on quality.
The economics
Set out in the assessment, seat by seat, where they can be given context.