Connectix, which is based in Braintree, Essex, grew quickly and in 1999 was named by the Daily Mail as the most promising company for the new millennium.

It now has a turnover of £50m a year.

“The biggest threats to success have been Chinese subsidies and the minimum wage,” Mr Hancock said.

“In 2008, the credit crunch arrived and the minimum wage had doubled. We gave in, closed down a factory of 175 people, and outsourced to China. [It was] a very dark day.

“In the years that followed we continued to mix low-cost outsourced products with higher-value UK-made goods. Covid was tough, but we found a way.”

Connectix currently employs 150 people in its four British factories but they will now be closed down and the employees given different roles within the company.

“We went down the route of manufacturing the more lucrative, less volume, customised product base in Britain but now because of cost rises and the minimum wage that’s not viable either.

“It wasn’t until the last six months of Labour’s rhetoric that you actually sit up and think, ‘What are we going to be paying for?’ And then when the Budget comes out you think, ‘This is just the start of it all.’

“It was just the whole mood of it. There’s a cliff coming for manufacturing. The minimum wage has gone up again after a 10 per cent rise last year, so that’s 16 per cent in two years.

“And it just goes on, you look at the NI rise which is massive for us all and I can’t see Labour not increasing that further.

“Manufacturing in Britain will die. It has already died, in my view.”