ONS figures show a second consecutive annual drop in the value of UK manufacturers’ product sales, with the total falling £8.3 billion from 2024.
The total value of UK manufacturers’ product sales fell to £452.0 billion in 2025, down 1.8 per cent from £460.3 billion in 2024, according to figures posted by the Office for National Statistics. The drop of £8.3 billion marks the second consecutive annual decline recorded by the ONS ProdCom Survey, which tracks what UK manufacturers actually sell across detailed product categories.
In an earlier ONS bulletin, the 2024 figure was recorded as £452.2 billion — a 3.1 per cent fall from £466.7 billion in 2023 — though the latest release revises 2024 upward to £460.3 billion. Using the earlier ONS vintage, the sector shed roughly £14.7 billion from 2023 to 2025; on the revised 2024 baseline, the two-year nominal fall is approximately £14.7 billion from £466.7 billion to £452.0 billion, though the year-on-year steps differ between the two series. That’s a sharper backdrop than the 2025 headline alone suggests.
For Kent, the figures carry real weight. The county has a broad manufacturing base — food and drink processing, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, engineering, and construction products among them — and many of those businesses supply national or export markets. Weaker national sales can mean reduced orders, tighter margins, and slower hiring, with knock-on effects for supply-chain workers in transport and warehousing. The Port of Dover, Port of Sheerness, and the Channel Tunnel all handle manufactured goods, so softer trade volumes could affect logistics employment in the county too.
The figures show the sector remains big: manufacturing accounted for 8.7 per cent of UK gross value added and 7.9 per cent of UK employment in the first quarter of 2025. But monthly output data tell a difficult story — UK manufacturing output fell 0.7 per cent between March and April 2025, then a further 1.0 per cent between April and May. The manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index also stayed below the 50 expansion threshold in mid-2025, signalling contractionary conditions.
Not every subsector moved in the same direction. Data from the Manufacturing Technology Association, using ONS output figures, show that in the three months to August 2025 overall manufacturing output was flat compared with the previous three months — but chemicals dropped 4.6 per cent, pharmaceuticals fell 1.6 per cent, and rubber, plastics and non-metallic minerals were down 2.1 per cent. Electronics rose 4.8 per cent, machinery grew 1.4 per cent, and electrical equipment was up 2.6 per cent. So the headline sales figure conceals a split picture beneath it.
ONS notes that revisions to ProdCom estimates are normal as more data become available — the 2024 sales figure, for instance, appears as £452.2 billion in the earlier bulletin but £460.3 billion in the latest release, reflecting such updates. No regional breakdown for Kent is available in the current ONS release.
Source: @ONS