You are liable for it after it leaves the building.

Product liability

Injury or damage caused by what you make, claimed by anyone in the chain of supply.

Without it — The largest exposure a manufacturer has, and the one that arrives years late.

Product recall

The cost of getting it back — notification, freight, disposal, replacement, lost income.

Without it — Excluded from liability forms almost universally, and routinely absent as a result.

Equipment breakdown

Mechanical, electrical and pressure-equipment failure, and the income lost while it is down.

Without it — Property policies exclude breakdown from an internal cause — the way machines actually fail.

Business interruption

Lost gross profit while production is stopped, plus the cost of working around it.

Without it — Rebuilding a plant is survivable; twelve months with no output frequently is not.

Stock and raw materials

Finished goods, work in progress and inputs, valued properly through the production cycle.

Without it — Part-finished stock is valued as raw material unless the policy says otherwise.

Contractual and vendor obligations

The additional insured status and limits your customers write into supply agreements.

Without it — A purchase order you cannot satisfy is a customer you cannot keep.

What actually drives a manufacturer’s premium?

Sales, the product, and where it ends up. Turnover is the rating base for the liability, which makes it an audited policy. The product matters more than the process — anything ingested, worn, load-bearing, powered or fitted to a vehicle rates differently from an inert industrial part. And end use matters most of all: the same bracket sold into shelving and sold into aerospace are not the same risk, and underwriters ask because the answer changes the price by multiples.

What product liability covers

We are growing fast. What should we expect?

An audit bill, unless the estimate is kept current. Liability rated on sales is reconciled against actuals at the end of the term, so a year of real growth produces an invoice for the difference — arriving after the money has been spent. Tell us when turnover moves rather than at renewal; a mid-term adjustment is a smaller check than a year of catch-up.

How the audit works

Does our property policy cover the machinery?

It covers the machinery being damaged by something external — a fire, a flood, an impact. It excludes the machine breaking itself, which is how machines actually break: a motor burns out, a boiler fails, a control board goes. Equipment breakdown is the separate coverage for that, and it carries the income loss while the line is stopped, which is usually the larger number.

Do we need cover for a component we buy in?

Your policy responds for the finished product you sold, including the bought-in part, and then your insurer pursues the supplier. That works when the supplier is solvent, domestic and insured. It works badly when they are none of those, which is why underwriters ask about your supply chain and why vendor certificates from your own suppliers are worth collecting rather than assuming.

What about workers comp for a plant?

Rated by class code and payroll, and manufacturing codes vary enormously — a food plant, a machine shop and a chemical blender are separate worlds. The controllable part is the experience modifier, which is your claims history against the expected loss for your codes and payroll. It compounds: a bad year raises the mod for three, so a return-to-work program is a pricing decision, not just a safety one.

How the mod is calculated