The UK has roughly 111 industrial robots installed for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, against South Korea's 1,012 — a gap of close to ninefold, and one that has been widening rather than closing as competitor nations continue to automate faster. A combination of weak business investment, a persistent skills shortage, high energy costs and risk aversion has been cited as driving the shortfall, and the concern among industry bodies is that factories which fail to catch up will struggle to compete on cost and output against more heavily automated rivals overseas.
Against that backdrop, individual case studies show what automation can deliver when it's adopted. A sheet metal fabricator in Kent, Contracts Engineering, installed a robotic welding cell five years ago at significant upfront cost and has since added a second unit. The company reports it has recouped its initial investment several times over, with pre-tax profits roughly quadrupling — and notably, the firm hired two additional human welders to work alongside the robots rather than reducing headcount, using the freed-up capacity to take on more work rather than the same work with fewer people.
Government funding aimed at closing the gap has expanded materially this year. The Modern Industrial Strategy commits £4.3 billion to Advanced Manufacturing over five years, including £2.8 billion specifically for R&D in automation, robotics and smart factory technology. A dedicated Robotics Adoption Hubs competition opened in February 2026, offering grants of £2 million to £7.5 million to organisations creating one-stop shops to help end-users adopt robotics and autonomous systems. The Made Smarter Adoption programme — which provides part-funded automation advice directly to manufacturing SMEs — has also been extended, with up to £99 million committed from 2026 to support a further 5,500 manufacturers.
For smaller fabrication and machining businesses, the practical takeaway from the Contracts Engineering case is less about the robot itself and more about the business case: automating a single repetitive, high-volume process freed capacity to grow rather than simply cut cost, and the payback period — while substantial upfront — was recovered several times over within five years. With grant funding now specifically targeted at adoption rather than just research, the barrier to entry for SMEs considering a first automation investment is lower than it has been at any point in the past decade.