Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN 724952. Companies House 07014570. Cover availability and terms depend on insurer underwriting at the time of quotation.
If you run a manufacturing business in Bristol, Severnside, Filton, Avonmouth, Yeovil, Stroud or the wider South West, the cover you need looks nothing like the SME template a packaged insurer will sell you. A single CNC machining centre is worth half a million pounds before tooling. A press hall can be uninsurable without sprinklers to a recognised standard. A products claim from a tier-2 aerospace contract can sit on the policy for fifteen years after the part ships. Exposures are bigger, wordings tighter, and underwriters pickier than they have been for a decade.
A typical manufacturing claim does not look like a slip-and-trip. It looks like a press tool fire that takes out a unique line and triggers sixteen weeks of BI while a replacement is built in Italy. It looks like a contaminated batch of polymer pellets recalled from three OEM customers. It looks like a labour-only sub-contractor crushed by a falling die during a tool change, with an HSE investigation running alongside the EL claim for eighteen months.
This page sets out what manufacturing insurance looks like when placed properly, and where the pressure points sit in 2026.
What manufacturing insurance is
Manufacturing insurance is not a single product. It is a package combining material damage on buildings, plant and stock; business interruption tied to the operating cycle; employers' liability sized to wage roll; public and products liability sized to the contracts the business signs; and a layered set of engineering, environmental and cyber covers that depend on what the factory does. Beyond a small jobbing shop, the package is built to the risk rather than pulled off a shelf.
The off-the-shelf line sits where any of the following becomes true. Turnover crosses five million pounds. The largest premises holds more than ten million in combined building, plant and stock. A critical machine has a lead-time over twelve weeks. The product supplies automotive, aerospace, defence, medical or food OEM customers with contractual indemnity terms. The site holds notifiable quantities under COMAH, DSEAR or ATEX. Below those triggers, a packaged combined product from Aviva, AXA, Allianz, RSA or Zurich sits comfortably. Above them, the buyer needs a broker who can present to markets that do not deal direct.
A broker matters for three reasons. Access: insurers and Lloyd's syndicates writing the better manufacturing risks (FM Global, HDI, Chubb, AIG, Liberty, the larger Lloyd's composites) take submissions from regulated brokers. Presentation: underwriters want a proper COPE write-up, sprinkler certification, loss prevention reports, a clear COMAH or DSEAR position where it applies, and a readable BCP. Claims advocacy: when fire hits, the loss adjuster arrives within forty-eight hours and the reinstatement strategy is set in the first two weeks. The broker should be in the room.
The covers you actually need
Material damage on buildings, plant, machinery and stock
The foundation of the programme. Sums insured should be new-for-old reinstatement on buildings, replacement cost on plant and machinery, and a rolling stock declaration covering raw materials, WIP and finished goods. The common mistake is underinsurance on plant, particularly where machinery was bought second-hand or revalued from book cost; average clauses bite hard in a partial loss. We recommend a desktop revaluation every renewal and a formal RICS or specialist plant valuation every three to five years on sites with significant machinery.
Premium drivers: construction, EML, sprinklers to LPCB or FM Global standard, smoke detection and ARC-monitored intruder alarms, separation between high-fire-load areas, and housekeeping on survey. Combined material damage on a mid-sized site sits in the ten-to-fifty-million range; the largest single-site EMLs we present run above one hundred million.
Business interruption on a manufacturing basis
BI is where manufacturing programmes most often fail at claims stage. Standard SME wording works for a shop or office. It does not work for a factory where reinstatement of a critical machine takes longer than the indemnity period. We recommend twenty-four months as a baseline, thirty-six months where machinery lead-time justifies it, and a machinery breakdown extension on critical lines. Cover should include increased cost of working, additional increased cost of working, denial of access from a neighbouring fire, public utilities failure, and supplier and customer extensions tied to named dependencies.
The sum insured is annual gross profit on an insurance definition (turnover less specified uninsured working expenses), grossed up to the indemnity period. Get gross profit wrong and the claim payment is wrong; this is the most common point of dispute in a manufacturing BI loss.
Employers' liability
Statutory minimum is five million pounds, market standard is ten million, and we present at ten million by default. The premium driver is wage roll split by occupation code; a CNC operator rates differently to a forklift driver, and a maintenance fitter working at height on overhead cranes rates differently again. Labour-only sub-contractors are EL exposures, not PL, and need to be declared as such. HSE prosecutions and sentencing guidelines have lifted the indirect cost of a serious EL claim significantly; the cover is the floor, not the ceiling.
Public and products liability
This is the cover that defines a manufacturing programme. The split between PL (something happens at your premises) and products (something happens because of a product you supplied) matters because wordings, limits and territorial scope differ. Most manufacturers we place buy a combined PL/Products limit of five to ten million; supply chains into automotive, aerospace, defence and medical routinely require ten or twenty million, and we have placed up to fifty million for tier-2 aerospace suppliers under Airbus and Rolls-Royce flow-down contracts.
Territorial scope is the trap. Standard wordings cover UK and EU. Products supplied into USA or Canada are excluded unless specifically endorsed, and USA/Canada cover can double or triple the products premium. If you ship to a UK customer who exports your component into a finished product sold in North America, you need advice on whether the chain triggers the exclusion. Watch the efficacy exclusion, the costs of recall exclusion, and the contractual liability extension.
Engineering inspection and machinery breakdown
Statutory inspection is not optional. LOLER 1998 covers lifting equipment at six- or twelve-month intervals; PSSR 2000 covers pressure systems; PUWER 1998 sits across most work equipment; the Electricity at Work Regulations sit across fixed installations. Most manufacturers buy these from their insurer's engineering arm (Allianz, RSA, Zurich, HSB, Bureau Veritas) because the inspector also reports back to the underwriter on plant condition.
Machinery breakdown pays for sudden and accidental mechanical or electrical failure of plant; it responds when a transformer blows, a CNC spindle seizes, or a press control fails outside warranty. On a critical-machinery site this should tie into BI. See our engineering inspection page for statutory regimes and combined cover.
Environmental impairment liability
Standard PL wordings cover sudden and accidental pollution. They exclude gradual pollution, clean-up costs at your own site, and natural resource damage. Environmental Impairment Liability (EIL) picks up these gaps. Any manufacturer storing bulk chemicals, solvents, fuels, plating solutions, paints or process effluent should look at EIL seriously. Premium drivers are substances held, proximity to controlled waters (Severn Estuary, Bristol Avon, Frome, Parrett), and Environment Agency permit conditions.
Product recall
For any manufacturer supplying automotive, aerospace, defence, medical or food OEM customers, recall is increasingly contractual. First-party recall responds to your own costs of recovering, replacing or destroying defective product. Third-party recall responds to your customer's costs when they recall their finished product because of your component. Limits start at one million and run to twenty-five million for tier-2 contracts. Triggers are tight; we walk clients through the wording at placement.
Cyber and operational technology
Manufacturing is where OT and IT have converged fastest, and threat actors know it. Ransomware on a production line shuts the factory in hours. Several large European manufacturers were taken offline for weeks in 2024 by attacks that started on the corporate IT network and propagated to PLCs and SCADA. Cyber policies written for office businesses are being rewritten for manufacturing; we place cover that includes BI from a cyber event tied to the operational cycle, not just IT systems. See our commercial cyber hub for the broader market position.
Goods in transit and marine cargo
Where finished product ships to customers, raw materials arrive from overseas, or sub-contract operations move part-finished goods between sites, GIT and marine cargo sit alongside the property programme. Premium drivers are values per conveyance, routes, and whether transit is own fleet or third-party haulier.
Sector-specific risks we see most
Fire load in plastics, polymer and packaging
Injection moulding, extrusion, thermoforming and corrugated packaging sit at the top of the property market's risk hierarchy. Fire load from polypropylene granulate, PE film, finished mouldings and corrugated board is enormous, and a single ignition source can destroy a building inside thirty minutes. We have seen plastics factories declared total loss within two hours of the alarm.
The market response since 2022 has been firm. Insurers want sprinklers to LPCB or FM Global standard, separation between process and storage, controlled hot-work permits, ARC-monitored detection, and a credible BCP. Without those, capacity is hard to find at any price. A typical polymer site: TIV fifteen million, EML eight million, sprinklered with current certificate, ARC alarm, separation between extrusion and finished goods. Without sprinklers, the same site rates at three or four times the premium and may struggle to find a lead market.
Critical-machinery dependency in CNC and precision engineering
A precision-engineering shop running three five-axis machining centres has a different BI profile to a press shop running twenty similar presses. The first cannot replace a damaged machine inside a twelve-month indemnity period because replacements are built to order with fifty-to-seventy-week lead-times from Switzerland, Germany or Japan. We have placed cover for a North Bristol precision-engineering business that needed thirty-six months indemnity and AICOW to fund use of a sister site's machinery while a replacement five-axis arrived. Standard twelve-month BI would have left the business insolvent.
Products liability into automotive, aerospace and defence supply chains
A tier-2 supplier into Filton aerospace or Yeovil rotorcraft will be handed a customer indemnity flow-down running twenty or thirty pages. The contract requires named limits, named territorial scope (often worldwide including USA and Canada), waiver of subrogation, additional insured status, and annual certificates. Standard SME products wording does not meet these requirements and buyers often discover this only when the customer's procurement team rejects the certificate. We have seen orders pulled because the insurance was not in order; mid-term restructure costs more than doing it properly at the previous renewal.
Environmental exposure at chemical, coatings and plating sites
Avonmouth, Severnside and parts of Newport docks hold a concentration of chemical, coatings and specialist process businesses. A solvent-using coating line falls under DSEAR; a larger site holding notifiable quantities falls under COMAH (lower or upper tier by inventory); a site discharging trade effluent operates under an Environment Agency permit with consent limits. The programme reflects all of this. EIL is essential; PL wording needs checking for gradual pollution language; own-site clean-up is not picked up by the property section. A typical claim: spillage from a bunded storage area migrating through a damaged liner, six-figure clean-up before contaminated soil is removed and the slab reinstated.
Recall exposure in food manufacturing
Food processing manufacturers face a different recall regime to retailers or hospitality. Contractual exposure runs through Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S, Waitrose, Co-op and Aldi technical specifications; regulatory exposure runs through the FSA and local Environmental Health. A single positive Listeria swab in a chilled product can trigger withdrawal across multiple SKUs, production days and distribution centres. First-party recall cost, third-party customer recovery, and BI from the shutdown are three separate heads of claim. See our food and drink hub for broader food sector coverage.
Bristol & South West considerations
The South West is one of the densest industrial regions in the UK and local cluster geography shapes the buy. The Filton corridor holds the largest aerospace cluster outside Toulouse and Seattle: Airbus wings, Rolls-Royce aero-engines, GKN Aerospace structures and Leonardo electronic warfare systems within a few miles, with tier-2 and tier-3 supply rippling through South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and North Somerset. Contractual flow-downs from those supply chains are non-negotiable; if a machining shop in Yate or Patchway wants to keep Airbus on the customer list, the insurance has to be right.
Avonmouth and Severnside hold the heavy-industry and chemical concentration: bulk storage, distribution, paint and coatings, animal-feed processing, scrap metal and waste. The Severn flood plain runs through the same footprint, with larger industrial estates in Environment Agency Flood Zone 3a; flood cover is rateable but deductibles are larger than five years ago, and there is no Flood Re-style solution for commercial property.
Yeovil sits at the rotorcraft and defence supply chain around Leonardo Helicopters; Bridgwater holds the Hinkley Point C supply chain and associated logistics and modular construction; Newport and the Heads of the Valleys hold residual steel around Tata and Liberty; Stroud and Dursley hold a precision-engineering cluster anchored by Renishaw; Bath and Trowbridge hold smaller pockets of precision and specialist manufacturing. Each cluster has its own underwriting profile and we place to it accordingly. Severn flood risk, M4/M5 logistics density, port exposure at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury, and high-value aerospace content in a small footprint all feed into how property and BI rates are set.
How to get it right at renewal
Start sixty to ninety days out. On a manufacturing programme that means kick-off at month minus three, full submission at minus two, market presentation at minus six weeks, terms at minus four weeks, bound cover in the final week. Anything tighter compresses negotiation and the buyer pays for the compression.
The submission matters. Underwriters want a clean COPE write-up on each premises, a site plan with separations marked, sprinkler certificates with recent test dates, ARC certification, smoke detection coverage, hot-work permit procedure, and photographs of production and stock. They want a five-year loss history with open and closed reserves separate, and a narrative on what changed after any significant claim. They want a products liability declaration broken out by customer sector and territory, with separate USA/Canada notes. They want a BCP they can read in fifteen minutes.
Claims history is read as a story. A clean five years tells one story; a fire loss followed by sprinkler installation and four clean years tells a better one; small EL claims with no management response tells a worse one. We present the narrative rather than letting underwriters infer it.
Risk-management evidence differentiates a good submission from a flat one: LOLER and PSSR records, PAT testing schedules, IOSH or NEBOSH safety lead, RIDDOR log with closure notes, COSHH assessments, DSEAR risk assessment, supplier audit programme, single-supplier risk register. None of this is window dressing; it affects terms.
Single-supplier dependence is asked at every renewal now. If sixty per cent of your raw material comes from one supplier in one country with no alternative qualified vendor, the underwriter wants to know. A multi-quote approach helps when one broker presents the same submission to multiple markets in parallel; it hurts when two brokers present partial submissions to overlapping markets. We run as sole broker.
How Apex helps
We are an independent commercial broker based in Bristol, FCA-regulated under FRN 724952, placing manufacturing programmes across the South West and beyond. We hold panel agencies with the principal markets (Aviva, AXA, Allianz, RSA, Zurich, Chubb, AIG, Liberty, HDI) and access Lloyd's via our wholesale network for risks needing syndicate capacity. We treat brokerage as a craft: renewal preparation sixty to ninety days out, submissions written and presented properly, claims advocacy in-house.
We rank first in Bristol for professional indemnity insurance and are building the wider commercial estate to the same standard. Director Matt Bartlett places the larger and more technical manufacturing risks personally. We cover the fifty-mile catchment including Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon, Yeovil, Taunton, Stroud, Trowbridge and Bridgwater. If you are renewing a manufacturing programme in the next six months, or you have a claim that is not being progressed, speak to us.
FAQs
Do I legally need manufacturing insurance?
Employers' liability is required under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 for any business employing staff, statutory minimum five million. Other covers are not legally required but are typically required by customer contracts, lenders or landlords.
How much does manufacturing insurance cost in the UK?
Premium varies by sub-sector, turnover, machinery values, EML, claims history and protections. Roughly: a light-engineering shop under one million turnover might pay two to five thousand annually; a mid-sized polymer or food manufacturer at ten million turnover, twenty-five to seventy-five thousand; a large COMAH site, six figures.
What is the difference between public liability and products liability?
Public liability covers injury or damage to third parties from your premises or activities; products liability covers injury or damage caused by a product after it leaves your control. They are usually combined into a single PL/Products limit but wording, exclusions and territorial scope differ.
Do I need to declare USA or Canada exposure on products liability?
Yes. Standard UK PL wordings exclude USA and Canada unless specifically endorsed, and exporting directly or indirectly without disclosing can void cover. If you supply a UK customer who exports to North America, take advice on whether your supply chain triggers the exclusion.
What indemnity period do I need on business interruption?
For a manufacturer with a critical machine over twelve months lead-time, twenty-four months is baseline and thirty-six months is often justified. The indemnity period needs to cover replacement of the longest-lead item plus commissioning and production ramp-up.
Do I need a sprinkler system to get insured?
Not always, but on plastics, polymer, packaging, paper, foam, timber, textile and certain food sites the property market increasingly treats sprinklers to LPCB or FM Global standard as the entry ticket. Without sprinklers, cover can be placed but premium is higher and capacity thinner.
What is environmental impairment liability and do I need it?
EIL is a standalone policy covering pollution exposures that standard PL excludes: gradual pollution, own-site clean-up and natural resource damage. Any manufacturer holding bulk chemicals, solvents, fuels or process effluent, or operating under an Environment Agency permit, should at least consider it.
How does product recall insurance work?
First-party recall pays your costs of recovering, replacing or destroying defective product; third-party recall pays your customer's costs when they recall their finished product because of your component. Cover is placed as a standalone policy with limits sized to contractual requirements.
Do you cover small jobbing shops as well as larger manufacturers?
Yes. We place cover from light-engineering jobbing shops and small CNC and fabrication businesses through to mid-sized polymer, food, packaging and chemical manufacturers. Below a certain size a packaged combined product is right; above it we build bespoke.
How long does a manufacturing insurance quote take?
For a mid-sized risk with a clean submission, two to three weeks from instruction to quoted terms is normal. For larger or complex risks needing Lloyd's capacity, four to six weeks is more realistic. Compressing the timeline beyond that usually costs the buyer money.
Do you place manufacturing insurance outside Bristol?
We place across the South West and South Wales catchment, including Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon, Yeovil, Taunton, Stroud, Trowbridge and Bridgwater. We also place national programmes for multi-site clients.
What happens if I have a fire claim?
The insurer's loss adjuster is normally appointed within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. We attend with you, manage the adjuster relationship, advise on reinstatement, and progress interim payments on BI. Claims advocacy is part of the service.
Other sectors we cover
- Engineering inspection and engineering insurance — statutory LOLER, PSSR, PUWER and electrical inspection regimes and how we combine them with the property programme.
- Food and drink insurance — food manufacturers, processors and producers, including BRCGS, recall, contamination and contractual indemnity into the major grocers.
- Construction insurance — fabricators, modular builders and the manufacturing side of the construction supply chain, including JCT contract works and projects cover.
Coverage area
We place manufacturing cover from our Bristol base across the wider South West and South Wales region, with concentrated activity in the Filton aerospace corridor, the Avonmouth and Severnside industrial belt, the Yeovil rotorcraft cluster, the Bridgwater Hinkley Point supply chain, and the precision-engineering pockets around Stroud, Bath and Trowbridge. Our wider commercial offer is set out on the commercial insurance Bristol and South West pillar, with local pages for Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, Newport, Yeovil and Stroud where the local industrial profile shapes the placement.
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