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Are they all made in Britain? Where are GW's manufacturing plants located? Nottingham? Does anybody have pics of what the inside of such a factory looks like? Or do they get their minis produced in China?

Nottingham, UK

I think this is GW, but I'm not 100% sure:

If you zoom in super close, you can see what appears to be a big stack of WHFB boxes. The top right quarter of the photo contains this stack. That's probably one of GW's production houses, all right.

Googling 'GW factory' produces images of this same place at different angles, as well.

All made in the UK. They did have a plant in the US as well for a while, but they closed it.

Nothing exciting about the inside. It's just like any other factory.

I'm disappointed there are no Grots in that picture.

Fun fact: If you are at Warhammer World and they don't have something in stock (particularly FW minis), they'll cast it on the spot for you.

 Enigwolf wrote:
Fun fact: If you are at Warhammer World and they don't have something in stock (particularly FW minis), they'll cast it on the spot for you.

That include sisters?

 Uriels_Flame wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
Fun fact: If you are at Warhammer World and they don't have something in stock (particularly FW minis), they'll cast it on the spot for you.

That include sisters?

If it's not OOP, presumably so. That's what I was told by the staff, and I actually had my FW order cast on the spot when I was there for Enter the Citadel last year. I don't know if it was my imagination or not, but it felt warm when I got it.

They'll cast up forgeworld for you for collections throughout the day (got to wait about 3 hours). I've no idea if they'll do metal or finecast though.

Yup, that's Lenton.

I think that pic was taken sometime around 2010-2011.

If you look all the way in the back, upper right you'll see what looks like a "mezzanine" level. That's where the Forge World resin casting used to be (around 2007-ish). Not sure where it's located in the warehouse now.

Lenton Nottingham, with head office, warhammer world, bugmans bar etc

Is that a one man factory?

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Is that a one man factory?

No, LOL.

Once the tools are in the machines you don't really need to do anything other than quality check the sprues every 30 minutes or so to make sure they are filling properly.

In Memphis we had 6 machines with one person running them all day.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Is that a one man factory?

How ironic that you missed the guy in the back with the high-visibility jacket

6 men in that photo. It looks quiet too.

Terreed wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Is that a one man factory?

How ironic that you missed the guy in the back with the high-visibility jacket

There's 3 other guys as well, indicated the the arrows. It's kinda like the GW version of Where's Waldo?

Each of those arrows points to 2 men

For a GW factory, I expected more evil henchmen, spikes, and death traps.

Those guys wear visibility jackets, so they must be roadworkers from an outside company (<-This means Joke)

@Swastakowey i guess you never worked in a factory that has extruders? It will be noisy, not as noisy as a metal workshop but still.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Those guys wear visibility jackets, so they must be roadworkers from an outside company (<-This means Joke)

@Swastakowey i guess you never worked in a factory that has extruders? It will be noisy, not as noisy as a metal workshop but still.

I have never seen a factory. I live in NZ and the closest thing I have seen thats a workshop is a boat factory, which looks nothing like this haha. I had to quickly google extruders to even know what they are.

So its looks empty and quiet but all these things are like running all the time or something?

They do seem to have some pretty cool toys in that factory!

It's actually in Lenton industrial estate, not Lenton. Lenton is a residential student area.

I know a couple of guys who work there. It is like any other factory job, unsurprisingly.

There was a GW intro video some years ago that had loads of behind the scenes bits in the manufacturing dept.

I can find it but my chief memory is of the ladies that cut vents on metal moulds.

I think it was an investors video but I can't find it anywhere.

I wonder why GW manufactures their stuff in the UK. Most companies like them have their factories in developing countries since the cost of labour is so much less.

 sing your life wrote:
I wonder why GW manufactures their stuff in the UK. Most companies like them have their factories in developing countries since the cost of labour is so much less.

Some companies actually strive to produce their product locally, such as the company I work for. All our majorCorelle, Pyrex, and Snapware products are made in 'mericuh*.

*Some Pyrex we contract to be made in France/Germany for the European market. Further, there is a line of glassware made by Arc International known as pyroceram that is also domestic to Europe that is distinct from the borosilicate material made by Pyrex.

Except, if they made product in China it would cost less to make the miniatures, which hopefully would lead to price drops.

 sing your life wrote:
Except, if they made product in China it would cost less to make the miniatures, which hopefully would lead to price drops.

Terrain is made in China ( "wall o 'dead cadians line " ) and is not cheap. Price drops he says......

 sing your life wrote:
Except, if they made product in China it would cost less to make the miniatures, which hopefully would lead to price drops.

WHere do you work? Let me know, then I'll call your boss and suggest he outsources your job to India or China.

Personally, I'm happy to pay a few pennies more for plastic soldiers if it means people aren't being exploited.

 sing your life wrote:
I wonder why GW manufactures their stuff in the UK. Most companies like them have their factories in developing countries since the cost of labour is so much less.

Any GW stuff manufactured in China would get pirated in about 25 nano seconds.

 sing your life wrote:
Except, if they made product in China it would cost less to make the miniatures, which hopefully would lead to price drops.

Injection moulded plastic already costs peanuts to manufacture.

Moving the production to China would have the negative effects (negative to GW) of:

Lengthening the supply chain when most companies are trying to move to lean manufacturing and JiT supply
Paying volumetric freight costs on relatively low value items
Paying import duty on shipments into the EU
IP risks if using an outsourced factory
Culture/ investment/ political risks if building their own facility
Design and Production being far removed from each other (this is enough of a problem where my company's design and production are 500 miles apart and nominally speak the same language)
Currency risks when incurring manufacturing costs in a currency that they don't have many offsetting incomes in
Prestige/ CSR risks moving from domestic production to cheaper offshore labour

Without doing a proper cost/ benefit analysis I can't say that it is cheaper or more expensive to manufacture in China, but it's not automatically the bargain you think.