The begging bowl is back on the table. Whenever a traditional manufacturing sector hits a rough patch, the script is the same. Trade bodies scream for a "Supercharger" scheme. Unions point to heritage. Politicians scramble to offer tax breaks or energy price caps to "save" an industry that hasn't evolved in forty years.
They call it a rescue. I call it a tax on progress.
The recent outcry over threatened ceramics firms isn't about protecting jobs or preserving craftsmanship. It is a desperate attempt to keep an obsolete energy model on life support. By demanding government intervention to lower energy costs, these firms are admitting they cannot survive in a world where carbon has a price.
The Subsidy Trap
When we talk about "Supercharging" an industry, what we are actually saying is that the general public should pay the difference between a company's inefficiency and the market rate for power. I have sat in boardrooms where the strategy isn't "How do we innovate?" but "Who do we lobby?"
It is a death spiral.
If a business model relies on the government fixing the price of gas to remain profitable, that business is already dead. It just hasn't stopped breathing yet. Ceramics is an energy-intensive sector, yes. But intensity is not an excuse for inertia. For decades, the industry ignored the shift toward electrification and high-efficiency heat recovery because gas was cheap. Now that the bill has come due, they want you to pay it.
The Heritage Myth
"We can't lose the Potteries!" is the emotional shield used to deflect any real economic scrutiny. This sentimentality is the enemy of growth.
- Heritage is a brand, not a business plan. If your only value proposition is that you have been doing the same thing since the Victorian era, you are a museum, not a manufacturer.
- Skill sets are transferable. The engineers and technicians in these plants are brilliant. They should be working on the next generation of solid-state batteries or aerospace composites, not firing plates that can be made more efficiently elsewhere.
- Protectionism breeds weakness. By shielding these firms from the reality of energy costs, we remove the only incentive they have to overhaul their technology.
In my years auditing supply chains, the most resilient companies aren't the ones with the loudest lobbyists. They are the ones that saw the energy crisis coming in 2015 and invested in hydrogen-ready kilns or microwave firing tech while their competitors were still patting themselves on the back for "tradition."
The Real Cost of Cheap Energy
Everyone asks: "How can we make energy cheaper for manufacturers?"
Wrong question.
The question is: "Why does this firm need so much energy to produce a $20 product?"
Energy prices in the UK and Europe are high for a reason. We are transitioning a global power grid. If we artificially lower prices for one sector, we distort the market and discourage the development of alternative materials.
Imagine a scenario where we stop the bailouts.
- The least efficient firms fail. This is painful but necessary.
- The "zombie" capacity is cleared out.
- Capital and talent migrate to the firms that actually invested in R&D.
- The industry shrinks in volume but explodes in value.
Instead, we are currently doing the opposite. We are keeping the laggards alive, which keeps the price of labor high for the innovators and prevents the consolidation needed to compete with global giants.
The False Promise of the Supercharger
The proposed "Supercharger" schemes often focus on network charges and policy costs. While these are legitimate grievances in a vacuum, focusing on them is like worrying about the weight of the paint on a car with a broken engine.
British ceramics firms often face energy costs double those of their counterparts in some parts of the US or Middle East. The "consensus" says we must match those lower costs to compete.
This is a race to the bottom.
We will never have the cheapest energy in the world. If your business requires the cheapest inputs to survive, you are in a commodity trap. The way out isn't a subsidy; it’s a radical shift toward high-margin, technical ceramics—the kind used in semiconductors, medical implants, and green energy infrastructure.
But you don't get there by subsidizing the production of dinner plates.
Stop Asking for a Handout and Start Scaling
The industry needs to stop acting like a victim of "global forces" and start acting like a sector that wants to win.
If I were running one of these threatened firms, I wouldn't spend a single pound on a PR campaign for government aid. I would be doing three things immediately:
- Aggressive Electrification: Gas is a geopolitical liability. Electricity is a technology. You can innovate with technology; you can only pray with gas.
- Material Science Pivot: Move away from high-volume domestic ware where the margins are razor-thin. If the kiln is running, it should be firing something that costs $500, not $5.
- Heat Harvesting: The amount of waste heat pumped into the atmosphere by traditional kilns is a crime against engineering. If you aren't capturing that to power your facility or heat your local community, you don't deserve a tax break.
The "Supercharger" is a sedative. It makes the pain go away for a year or two, but the underlying cancer of inefficiency remains. We need to stop mistaking survival for success.
The firms that cannot survive a period of high energy prices are firms that have failed to adapt. Letting them go isn't "abandoning our industrial heartlands." It’s clearing the ground for an industry that actually belongs in the 21st century.
Stop saving the past. Start funding the future. If a kiln can't pay for its own power, let it go cold.
