Wage and consumption levels are rising in the developing economies of Asia, including China. This is opening up an enormous market to UK machine builders and automation engineers who can help them keep production costs down. At a recent UK Machine Builder conference, hosted by Mitsubishi Electric, strategies for entering Asia and China and building sustainable business were explored.

The great rush into Asia has been underway for some years but until recently the call for manufacturing automation and production machinery had been relatively modest but now, with local labour rates increasing and domestic consumption growing, things are changing fast. In China there is a further twist in that the senior figures of national government are giving way to new leaders who are charged with growing and developing the internal economy of the country - and where China leads, its neighbours are likely to follow.