Member Article

North East partnership set to boost exports

A trio of North East business support agencies have joined forces to deliver a £3.6 million UK Trade and Investment contract, aimed to help more exporters in the region.

The consortium comprises of the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC), RTC North and the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), who will take over the contract as of April and hope to make exports a key driver of the North East economy.

The group will use close industry links and other regional business networks to increase the visibility of the region’s expert team of International Trade Advisors, with the aim of encouraging more small and medium businesses to engage with the global marketplace.

David Coppock is Head of UKTI for the North East region. He said: “As well as their long established links with local businesses and the wider business support community, the winning partners each bring a particular level of expertise in international development, emerging technology, new markets and industry engagement.”

Through the services, companies looking to explore overseas markets will be given access to accurate and impartial advice and overseas market intelligence. New exporters will have access to a number of core services including ‘Passport to Export’ , the ‘Overseas Market Introduction Service’ and the ‘Export Markets Research Scheme’.

Alongside this, businesses will be offered a global technology service to identify leading edge developments in overseas markets, a cluster engagement strategy aimed at improving export strategies within key sectors and innovative coaching programmes to help young entrepreneurs and first time exporters.

The NECC have previously engaged in their own programme of export support, but CEO James Ramsbotham believe that the synergies between the organisations will help to create an excellent and productive service.

He said: “This is great news for North East exporters. Our partnership with RTC North and NEPIC is founded on a combined will to drive up exports in our region and meet the Chancellor’s challenge to double UK exports by 2020.

CEO of RTC North Gordon Ollivere MBE has worked with businesses in the region for over 20 years on developing new products and accessing markets overseas. He welcomed Lord Green’s challenge to UKTI to increase the number of firms assisted from 20,000 to 50,000 by 2015 earlier this week.

He said: “The recent CBI conference has stressed the need for the UK to add at least £20 billion to the value of its exports by 2030 to compensate for the ongoing loss of production output to low wage economies.

NEPIC is one of the region’s most active sector focused networks and counts some of the largest local exporters among its membership.

Stan Higgins is the company CEO. He added: “The feedback we received from our bid to carry out this work was that it oozed with industrial engagement, had real partnership commitment and a clear desire to grow the exports local businesses.

“I know that James, Gordon and myself are passionate about this region and we are all committed to build its capacity to export. We are the last remaining net export region in the UK. We aim to keep this prime position and grow our export even further and make the North East region the Jewel in the Crown in the UKTI portfolio.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .