There is scope for sure, I'm not familiar with the shipping costs but I'd guess at raw materials being cheaper than finished products in general?
It breaks down differently for different products and volumes.
Shipping full containers is the cheapest way. So importers supplying the retailers tend to bring in this way. A shoe box can cost around 50p from China to UK warehouse if you add in shipping, insurance and clearance costs.
That is clearly going to be more significant with a $4 slipper, than a $40 technical show.
The other factor of course is tariff. WTO tariffs are 17% for textile/synthetic upper and 10% for leather with a few exceptions, but then the EU has added an anti-dumping duty and as it's been in place almost 18 years now in some way, then perhaps Adidas feel that it warrants a move back to domestic production.
Some components are internationally priced, such as rubber, so the real advantage that China and the Far East had in terms of Labour cost in Labour intensive industries is shrinking as their Labour costs have experienced double digit growth year on year for almost 2 decades.
It's hard to see demand being met by supply if wild fish is cheap. So well either strip the oceans bare or massively scale up farming with wild fish a luxury product.[/QUOTE]
Yes and that has been the problem for some fish. Salmon can be farmed cheaper than wild. But experiments with cod farming have run in to trouble because cod is now plentiful again, hence the price has dropped and the farmed price became more than the fish market price.
Hence the farming is currently working with more premium priced fish like Turbot, Bass and Halibut.
One of the big issues Salmon farmers have faced is that the way they farm, with smolts in fine mesh nets in the fresh water lochs such as Loch Awe, Shin, Garry... then being moved to Sea Water and the possibility of cross contamination and infection.
The Bass, Turbot and Halibut are all (I think) farmed in huge land based tanks, close to shore, where they pump in Sea Water but keep the farmed fish away from the wild and there is no chance of an escape.
I'm sure shore based farming will be the future and then it may open up to a greater variety of fish.
