Nearshoring is not a map. It is a margin.
Every major consultancy has now published a nearshoring report. They all contain the same map of Central Europe with arrows. The arrows go from Germany to Poland, from Switzerland to Czechia, from Italy to Romania. The narrative is logistics: shorter supply chains, lower freight, less risk. This is not wrong. It is also not the actual trade.
Nearshoring is not a map. It is a margin. Polish factories know precisely what they are worth to a German balance sheet. German balance sheets do not. The gap between those two views is where the real money is being made, and it is not being made by the consultancies.
Three reads of the same room
Ⓐ The Polish operator's read. The factory directors we have spoken to in central Poland already know they can produce, in some categories, to a higher quality standard than their German customer's German competitor. They know their labour cost advantage. They know the EU regulatory floor protects them. They are not desperate for the contract. They are open to it. There is a difference. The difference is worth about eight margin points.
Ⓑ The German balance sheet's read. German procurement still treats Polish manufacturing as a cost-down play. The procurement officer is rewarded for "saving 20%" relative to a German supplier. She is not rewarded for understanding that the same product, from the same Polish supplier, is being sold to a Swiss customer at plus 12% over German pricing because the Swiss are happy to pay for quality and the Polish supplier knows it. Procurement is solving last decade's optimisation problem.
Ⓒ The arbitrage in the middle. The trade is not Germany to Poland. The trade is: capital from the German balance sheet, into a holding structure that prices Polish manufacturing at Swiss-equivalent quality terms, that resells to Germany at a price which still saves Germany money but at a margin that compounds into the holdco. The holdco is the entire game.
Who is winning
A small number of Polish private equity firms and some quietly excellent family offices in southern Germany. The big consultancies are not in this trade because the trade does not need a consultancy. It needs an operator who has lived in both rooms.
If you are a German manufacturer reading this, do not chase the nearshoring trend as a cost play. Buy the supplier. If you are a Polish manufacturer reading this, do not sell to the German customer at last year's prices. They will pay more.
If you are anyone else: pay attention. The boring trade is the one that compounds.