Manufacturing

While not as bad as the loss of 80,000 manufacturing jobs in the 1980s, the loss of a further 30,000 jobs in the 1990s showed that the process of restructuring did not stop in 1990. The picture that emerges is more varied than the destruction of the earlier decade. There is certainly evidence of a lean, mean, more export‐orientated group of firms that are competing internationally under the new low protection regime. On the other hand, it is clear that the process of restructuring and the removal of protection did not stop in the 1990s. There has been a sizeable loss of larger factories and a 22 per cent increase in smaller businesses, while surprisingly the level of foreign controlled enterprises has not increased significantly. In terms of manufacturing's contribution to exports there is both good and bad news. Exports of machinery, for example, increased by 518 per cent between 1989 and 1999. The bad news is that this is still only 18 per cent of total dairy exports, 29 per cent of meat, and only marginally ahead of wool exports, which have declined by 58 per cent in value between 1989 and 1999.