The chief executive of a major Scottish manufacturer that supplies installation solutions to the global network sector has hit out at the lack of a meaningful industrial strategy in the UK, as the country scrambles to kickstart its sluggish economic growth.

Tony Rodgers has overseen the bold international expansion of Emtelle, which designs and manufactures blown fibre cable and ducted network solutions from its factories in Hawick and Jedburgh, with the opening of manufacturing plants in Abu Dhabi and North America in recent years. It also has a factory in Germany.

Emtelle, which began life as a supplier of uPVC duct to the General Post Office (now BT) in 1980, employs more than 400 people across its two sites in the Borders, where its “core culture, our DNA” remains.

However, Mr Rodgers expressed frustration over the absence of plans to boost Scotland and the UK’s manufacturing prowess.

Asked if he thinks manufacturing is taken seriously by government, Mr Rodgers told The Herald: “No, I don’t. I think as the UK and probably even more so as Scotland, we don’t take manufacturing seriously at all. And I always say that. I say to my teams manufacturing is actually very difficult. It is the most difficult type of industry you can work in because you are bringing in many things to put together, and either melt or change their form into something different and add value at many different stages of the process. And that involves purchasing, supply chain, actual manufacture, stocking and then selling.

“You need to do everything in a business if you are a manufacturer. In order to be able to do everything and do everything efficiently in a country, that country needs to have a manufacturing strategy or it won’t have a manufacturing base.

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“What people also forget is that manufacturing businesses generate a huge amount of jobs, and they generate many more jobs than almost any other type of business because they create a huge supply chain that generates everything all the way down. If you take our business in Scotland, none of our raw material comes from Scotland. There was a potential chance that some of it could have come from Grangemouth but clearly that now will no longer be the case. We buy some PVC resin from Inovyn in the north of England. That is the only place for our UK business to buy material – everything else will be imported.”

When asked if the UK can still build a production base for raw materials, he said: “Unless you are going to accept that we are going to have a whole country based on services, we have to. Somebody has to take the challenge to have a proper manufacturing strategy.

“I can give you the woes and the bad examples of what’s gone wrong in the UK with supporting our business and our supply chain but I see exactly the same thing happening in Germany. I don’t see it happening in the US and I absolutely don’t see it happening in the UAE. One of the things that attracted me to our investment in the UAE [Abu Dhabi] was the fact the people in the economic zone we invested in were laser-focused on setting up manufacturing businesses. They realise that manufacturing businesses bring a disproportionately high level of GDP, because we take all these raw materials and all the things that come in and we add value at every stage of our process.

“They understand that particularly in Abu Dhabi because they don’t want to be another Dubai, which is effectively a services economy.”

Mr Rodgers added: “I was there [Abu Dhabi] just after the Christmas and New Year break in our world and signed a co-operation agreement with Borouge, which is part Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and is the supplier of raw material plastic to us and therefore tied to our supply chain in.

“What Abu Dhabi and the US do is place a huge value on something called in-country value, which is the amount of value you add to your products within your own geographical jurisdiction. And when you bid for government-funded projects they take that into account.

“They don’t give you everything, but they give you a competitive preference over items that will be imported from outside your borders. And I would love to see the UK do something like that. I would love to see Scotland do something like that, where with government-funded projects there is preference given to items that are manufactured and contributed to the GDP of our country.”

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Mr Rodgers, who initially joined Emtelle as chief financial officer 10 years ago, describes the company as a business success story that has not been told in Scotland.

While he would like Emtelle to do more business in Scotland, it is a small market compared to its presence in other nations.

Emtelle now sells its products in around 50 to 60 countries, supported by manufacturing facilities in Germany for Central Europe and the Benelux countries, Abu Dhabi, which opened around six months ago, and North Carolina in the US.

“The reason that we have to move our manufacturing globally was because in our game you need to be close to your customer, or the only people who get rich are global shipping companies,” he said. “You just have to be close to your customer.

“But we still have the technical head R&D function in Hawick and it will remain in Hawick as long as I am CEO. Hawick is where our DNA is. That will always be our head of solutions development.

“That’s where our people are who drive the solutions. That’s where our core solutions expertise lies and always will lie.”

Mr Rodgers added that unlike competitors that “buy and sell Chinese product and put it together”, Emtelle manufactures 90% of what it sells from scratch at its sites around the world. He says this “sets us apart”.

The company holds about 50 patents and “many more” trademarks for its R&D.

“We are, technically, probably the most advanced company in the world at providing solutions for the installation of fibre-optic cables, broadband and data networks globally,” he said.

“We, alongside British Telecom, invented the concept of taking a fibre-optic cable and blowing it on a cushion of compressed air through a microduct.

“That was our invention, that was our core that started this [business] because before people used to pull cables through duct systems at a rate of probably 10% of what you can install air-blown fibre at. And we have spent the last 30 years taking that globally.”

Using Emtelle’s technology, fibre can be blown for 2.4km in about half an hour, 40 minutes. In the past, cable could be pulled that distance in a day.

“The main cost-saving with air-blown fibre versus any other technology is you need fewer manholes,” Mr Rodgers said. “Manholes are really expensive, so if you can blow that distance you need less of these manholes.

“What people forget is if you start in the middle manhole, you can go 2.4km [on either side], so you can actually have a blow of 4.8km.

“And what you do is you go to the next manhole and you blow it again.

“You can really see the economies of scale in blowing instead of pulling.”

Although Emtelle is still in the early stages of building a presence in the US, he said the technology is “absolutely sweetly designed for the market because of the distances”.

However, Mr Rodgers insisted it is “designed for any market, because when you are doing a cable run, whether it be a city centre street, the suburbs, or a backbone cable, which is maybe running between cities, air-blown fibre is without doubt the best commercial solution, both for initial installation and from a total cost ownership model”.