What is meant by “British-made” on Buy Britain?

Here at Buy Britain, we are focused on supporting British-made products, local skills and jobs. 

We’re not saying that you should only buy British-made, but there are compelling reasons to shop local. We’ll cover those in future posts. 

For now, we want to explain more about what we mean when we say  “British-made”:

What is/is not British-made?

It’s worth saying up front that there’s no 100% watertight definition. For some products it’s clear cut, for others it’s less so. 

For BuyBritain.com – to qualify as British-made, products must either…

  1. Be wholly produced, manufactured, or assembled within the UK, or 
  2. Have been significantly changed through a treatment or process within the UK

…and, the Seller must be based in and selling from the UK

(UK here means England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland )

So, it’s OK if some of the components/raw materials in a product are sourced from overseas, as long as the end product is clearly a result of significant assembly and modification of those parts/materials. And this is where some subjectivity creeps in, because it’s not always clear what “significant” is. 

In such cases, we tend to apply the test – is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Or to put it another way: has most of the product value been added here in the UK? 

Some examples where we would say “Yes” are:

  1. Oak furniture that has been handcrafted in the UK using raw imported wood
  2. Jewellery wholly assembled in the UK, using some imported components (but not all)
  3. Chocolate where raw imported chocolate has been transformed into the finished product here in the UK

Some examples of products that would not qualify:

  1. Designed in the UK – but made elsewhere
  2. Manufactured by a UK company – but not in the UK
  3. T-shirts made outside the UK with designs printed on to them in the UK

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