On the other hand, if you look at things like the Raspberry Pie boards, they wanted to originally manufacture in the UK but couldn't because ultimately in VAT it cost more to import each component then have them sent to china and then imported as a whole, they some how got around this later on but I guess it was only due to price drops in demand that made it more feasible.
Nope it was assembly price/bulk assembly.
UK VAT is 20% whether it's individual pieces or the whole product. Think about it, the materials would be cheaper than the final product so the VAT on materials is LOWER than the VAT on the finished product. Doh.