Who can help us move our production from China to Europe or elsewhere in Asia?

Look for a party that runs the transfer rather than advises on it: its own engineering to assess your drawings and tooling, people who can stand next to the first production run, and a track record of both moving existing moulds and building a new line from scratch. Moving production is a transfer, not a sourcing exercise. Alongside the order you are moving the tooling, the current drawings, the material specification and the quality history, and on a product that has run at the same factory for years those four are rarely complete. Keep two routes open while you plan: move the existing tool, or open new tooling while the old line keeps supplying. Plan for four to nine months from decision to stable supply.

What actually moves, and what quietly stays behind?

Four things move. The order of securing them decides how the rest of the project goes.

1. The tooling, including the ownership of it. Paying for a tool does not automatically make you its owner. Read the contract for what it says about ownership, storage and maintenance costs, and if there is no contract, your invoices and payment records are what you have. 2. The current drawings. Not the set you launched with, but the version carrying every change made on the shop floor since. Those late changes are often undocumented. A 3D scan of an approved part is usually the most reliable record you can get. 3. The material specification. Grade, supplier type and colour reference, plus any recycled content. A resin that is routine in one country can be a special order in another. 4. The quality history. Dimensional reports, scrap rates, field complaints. That is what lets a new manufacturer steer instead of rediscovering your product's weak points at your expense.

Point two is the quiet schedule killer. A product that has run for five years almost always differs from its drawing, and the first samples from the relocated tool are where you find out which deviations were functional and which were accidental.

Does moving assembly elsewhere change my country of origin?

Not on its own, and this is the assumption that most often breaks a business case. Origin is determined by substantial transformation rules, which look at where the product took on its essential character, not at the port it left from. The test differs per product code and per destination market, so a product that gains origin in one country for one tariff line may not for another.

That matters because duty is frequently the reason for the move in the first place. The Reshoring Initiative recorded around 244,000 US manufacturing jobs announced through reshoring and foreign direct investment in 2024, taking the total past two million since 2010, and reported that tariffs were cited as a driver 454% more often in 2025 than in 2024. If duty is your driver, the commodity code and the origin position are the first two things to verify with a customs specialist, before you compare unit prices.

The same logic works in your favour on the European side. The European Commission states that the EU's trade agreement with Vietnam, in force since 1 August 2020, removes over 99% of tariffs, with EU duties on Vietnamese imports phased out across seven years. A relocation within Asia can therefore change your landed cost in Europe without changing your unit price at all, provided your product meets the agreement's rules of origin.

Europe or elsewhere in Asia: how do I choose?

By looking at where your product's cost and risk actually sit, not at which region is cheaper in general. Europe is not the expensive exception you need a reason for: the higher the volume and the more automated the process, the smaller the share of the piece price that is hand labour, and the less a regional wage gap decides anything. In practice the decision comes down to six variables.

| Variable | Closer to home in Europe | Elsewhere in Asia | | --- | --- | --- | | Unit price on labour intensive work | Higher. Eurostat put EU hourly labour costs in 2025 between EUR 12 and EUR 57 | Lower, and the gap widens with every manual operation per unit | | Unit price at high volume on an automated process | Close. Material, cycle time and machine hours set the price, and hand labour is a small line | Lower on paper, but the advantage shrinks as fewer hands touch the product | | Lead time to delivery | Days to a week by road | Four to six weeks by sea, plus the planning around it | | Working capital and reaction time | Lower and faster. You call off smaller and more often, and a change is not stuck behind what is already at sea | Higher and slower. You finance months of goods in transit, and every change lands on the next sailing | | Freight exposure | Limited and predictable | Drewry's index for Shanghai to Rotterdam moved between roughly USD 2,800 and USD 4,900 per 40ft during 2026 | | Duty | None within the EU | Depends on origin and the applicable trade agreement |

Energy is the line that can fall the other way, and it varies most within Europe itself: Eurostat recorded between EUR 7.48 and EUR 25.52 per 100 kWh for non-household consumers in the second half of 2025. On an energy intensive process you compare sites, not regions.

The honest summary: on labour intensive work, closer to home buys lead time, lower inventory and faster reaction, and you pay for it in unit price. At high volume on an automated process that sum changes. Hand labour is a small line, and freight, inventory, flexibility and duty weigh more than the hourly wage. Model landed cost over the volume you actually run before you write Europe off, because on large series the answer regularly comes out the other way.

Does the existing tool move, or do you open new tooling?

Not every tool can move, and that is a route of its own rather than a setback. A mould built in China for production in China was built around the machines standing there. If it does not fit the new supplier, opening new tooling is the serious alternative to transferring, and it buys you one thing a transfer never does: the old line keeps running until the new one is qualified.

A mould is not a loose block of steel. It is tied to the environment it was built in, and five things have to match:

• The press. Clamping dimensions, tonnage, shut height and locating ring.
• Ejection. Pattern and stroke differ per machine, and a different pattern means a new ejector plate.
• Ancillaries. Cooling connections, the hot runner controller with its connectors, and the take-out robot taught on this tool.
• Standard components. Springs, guides and bushings come from a local supplier. Not available at the new site means every breakdown turns into a lead time.
• Documentation. Tool drawings, maintenance history and shot count. Without them the new party is buying an unknown.

Each of these can be engineered around. The question is whether that modification, plus transport, refurbishment and a tool whose remaining life nobody can state, together beat starting again.

| Route | What you gain | What it costs | | --- | --- | --- | | Move the existing tool | No new investment in steel, and the part comes out exactly as it does today | A production gap, a refurbishment whose scope only shows at disassembly, and reprocessing on a different press | | Open new tooling | The old line keeps supplying until the new series is approved, and the tool is built for the machines and the volume you have now | More cash up front, the build time of a tool, and a full first article inspection |

A third variant is to open new tooling and keep the old tool running as a fallback until qualification is complete. That means two lines at once, and staying dependent on a supplier who knows you are leaving.

What new tooling costs depends on the number of cavities, whether side actions are needed, the steel grade, the cycle time you ask for and the volume you amortise it over. Ask for the tooling price together with the piece price: on their own neither tells you anything, because a cheaper tool with a longer cycle time costs more across a year than the other way around.

The decisive argument here is rarely price, it is continuity. In a transfer your only tool sits on a truck, then in a workshop, then on an unfamiliar press, and you supply from stock for those months. With new tooling the old line keeps running while the new one is built, and you switch only once the first article inspection has passed, so the chain is never interrupted. A new tool also reopens decisions that were frozen years ago, from wall thickness to cavity count, so a DFM review up front can take cycle time and scrap out for the rest of the product's life. That is why the route is worth considering even when the old tool could physically be moved.

One brand running roughly 120,000 units a year had its existing tool assessed and learned that the shut height and the hot runner did not match the new presses. Modification was possible, but it would have taken the tool out of production for two months. They opened new tooling, kept the old line supplying until the first article inspection had passed, and missed no deliveries.

What does the transfer cost, and how long does it take?

Four to nine months, in five phases that cannot be shortened by skipping them. After phase 2 the project forks: either the tool moves, or new tooling is built.

1. Establish what you own (2 to 4 weeks). Tooling ownership, drawing set, material specification, quality history. 2. Assess the tooling (2 to 4 weeks). Condition, remaining shot life, and whether it fits the machines at the receiving site. If it does not fit, you continue on the new tooling route. 3. Transport and refurbishment (6 to 12 weeks), or tool build. For a transfer: removal, shipping, cleaning, replacing wear parts, new connections. For new tooling: DFM review, build and first sampling. That route usually takes longer, but you keep supplying from the old line throughout, so the lead time does not land on your deliveries. 4. Sampling and qualification (4 to 8 weeks). First article inspection with a dimensional report against the agreed specification, plus a functional test. 5. Parallel running (1 to 3 months). Both sources supply until the new one is demonstrably stable. On the new tooling route that overlap is built in, because the old line never stopped.

Budget separately for three things people forget: the refurbishment after transport, the scrap from finding the process window again on different machines, and the inventory build that covers the overlap.

One example from a brand running roughly 90,000 units a year: they announced their departure to the incumbent before the drawings had been collected. The final drawing package took eleven weeks to arrive, and the project lost a full quarter to a document request that would have taken days a month earlier.

What separates a party that can do this from one that cannot?

Three things, and none of them appear on a website.

First, whether they assess your tooling before quoting a unit price, including a view on whether new tooling is the better route. A price given without that assessment moves the refurbishment risk onto you.

Second, whether they have people who can physically watch the first runs. Qualifying remotely from photographs works until the first deviation, and then it does not.

Third, whether they tell you what will not get cheaper. A party quoting only the unit price, leaving out qualification, scrap, inventory and the parallel running period, is handing you a number you will have to correct yourself later.

Ask one more question: how they handle the moment you notify your current supplier. A party that has done this before will have an opinion about the sequence.

Production Heroes takes products from design to series production, from feasibility and cost price to sourcing and supply chain, and supplies moulds and tooling to manufacturers across Europe, from the Netherlands and its own presence in China.

Sources: Reshoring Initiative, 2024 Annual Report including 1Q2025 insights (June 2025); Eurostat hourly labour costs (March 2026); Eurostat electricity prices for non-household consumers, second half of 2025; Drewry World Container Index, Shanghai to Rotterdam, 2026; European Commission on the EU-Vietnam trade agreement.