Bighugg said..
as to availability of 100% local made components, process products and build in your country . Can it be done ? And at what local cost ?
It can be done in France, as we have still a bit of chemical industry, so we have locally produced high quality resins (Sicomin) and glass and carbon cloth. Gong even make its Chinese factories use biosourced French Sicomin resins and German carbon cloths for its pro line. The foam blanks are an issue, but Gong co-created a Portugese factory which produced blanks while obeying all the EU stringent worker safety environment regulations, so it can be done. Gong is now building a new big factory center near its HQ, so there is still hope.
The issue for France is finding a factory willing to produce a high number of boards. It is easy to produce boards on a small scale (~ten boards a week), plenty of small manufacturers exist, with some quite innovative such as
Notox
www.sicomin.com/case-studies/sicomin-and-notox-surfboardsBlack Local infusion:
blacklocal.com/construction/For instance, it is easier to weather bad spells if you have not a lot of regular employees, as co-founders can take pay cuts in small structures.
But it is impossible to find a factory in France willing to tackle the challenge of making a huge number of boards. Gong has contacted more than a hundred... I guess the various French governments, like most other EU ones but unlike Germany, considered that manufacturing things was a thing of the past and should be left to China, so there is no help for them. They even left the last French mask-producing factory die last year...
