Member Article

Chamber International advises Shipley maternity unit supplier on Australian order

A major export order for birthing pools for a hospital in Australia has been won by a small West Yorkshire business.

The order for birthing pools for a new maternity unit at Canberra Hospital has been won by AquaBirths, Shipley, owned and managed by Ruth and David Weston.

After receiving the initial enquiry, AquaBirths, which Ruth and David Weston acquired after seeking a portable birthing pool for the birth of their fourth child in 2003, handed all documentation and logistics for the £25,000 order over to overseas trade specialist, Chamber international, Bradford.

Ruth Weston says: “It was a classic case of a small business winning an exciting order and not really knowing what to do. We were like The Babes In the Wood so we contacted Chamber International for help.

“We could not have managed without them. They took care of everything for us and allowed us to concentrate on running our business.”

Chamber International documentary credit accounts manager, Roy Broadhead, who, with his team, handled the entire logistics of the order, says: “We try to help first time exporters avoid some of the pitfalls by working closely with them.

“Sometimes we become their export office handling orders from start to finish until they learn to do it for themselves. AquaBirths products are quite fragile and packaging was the first thing we needed to look at to ensure the baths arrived in one piece.”

AquaBirths, which sub-contracts its manufacturing, has doubled its turnover every year since 2003 and currently supplies 40 birthing pools to NHS hospitals throughout the UK.

Since receiving the enquiry from Australia, the company has also secured orders in Amsterdam and Gabon.

Chamber International, which also runs the We are International Export Network as part of Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership’s We are International campaign, helps hundreds of new and experienced exporters with a wide range of specialist services to make exporting easier and more cost effective each year and is exclusively partnered with London headquartered global testing organisation, Intertek, to assist with a wide range of issues including product conformity.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .