For the record I am a proud New Zealander, living in London since 1998. So don’t for a minute think that Londinium I is being built in England by some old duffer with a cloth cap, sick with nostalgia from the days when the British Empire wrapped around the globe
If you had told me back in 2004 when I founded Londinium that I could find some of the best engineered espresso machines in Birmingham I would have laughed you to scorn. I held the unshakeable belief that the only espresso machines worth owning came from Italy. Anything else must be a pale imitation made by someone who didn’t really have a deep understanding of how the engineering impacts the espresso. Its taken me the best part of 10 years to learn that I was wrong
Londinium I is being built in England on merit. I always assumed that for us to make a machine in England it would end up having to be sold for twice the price of any other established machine on the market. I assumed that England would not be a cost competitive location for manufacture, that it would have to be built in the far East, or at a minimum manufactured in the far East and assembled in England
It would seem as though the high tide mark for relocating manufacturing from the ‘expensive West’ to the ‘inexpensive East’ has been reached. I understand from various contacts in manufacturing that costs of production are rising in the far East to the extent that certain manufacturing activities are being brought back to their original country of manufacture
Even if it was cost effective, I assumed the requisite skills for making an espresso machine that would set new standards of performance (i.e. new standards of thermal stability in the group) would not exist in the UK. Wrong again
So to those of you like me who grew up with the worst of British engineering in the form of ailing motor vehicles from a British car industry that was in its death throes, I can understand your scepticism for my enthusiasm in making Londinium I in the England
The truth is that over the last 30 years or so all the weak hands have been flushed out of British manufacturing. Since the reforms of the late ’80s any manufacturing activity that couldn’t compete on a global footing was lost
Anything that remains now after more than three decades of harsh free market economic policy is as a consequence almost certainly world class. The kind of remnants I have in mind are niche, highly skilled activities within the automotive sector (e.g. Formula 1 intellectual property & development), Hi-fi equipment, aerospace, defence systems, etc. You can now add espresso machines to the list. I know some of you reading this would be able to expand on this list of niche manufacturing in the UK considerably, but I think it is sufficient to illustrate the point
With this backdrop in mind, I trust you will now have a better understanding of our decision to have Londinium I manufactured in England. For the record, the machine is not just being assembled in England with components made abroad. All components other than the lever group (which is manufactured in Italy) are made in England, right down to relatively low value components like the brass safety valve. I know this because I have stood in the factory in Birmingham and observed the components being made on CNC lathes, and the sheet metal being cut with plasma cutters, etc
Londinium I is an espresso machine that sets new standards of excellence in an open global marketplace of free trade and it is proudly made in England on merit, not on nostalgia