Member Article

Leeds LEP garners Saudi Arabian interest after export campaign

A Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) campaign to boost exporting looks set to go international itself after attracting observers from overseas.

Two delegates from the Saudi Export Programme based in Riyadh attended the latest We Are International networking event at Deloitte’s in Leeds on a fact-finding mission about the initiative after reading about it online.

The two, Ziad A Alsabbaly and Talal S AlSalem, from The Saudi Fund for Development, which offers financial support for Saudi businesses wishing to export, took part in the two-hour event attended by more than 100 novice exporters and chatted with export advisers from UKI and Chamber International.

Ziad A Alsabbaly said: “We’re grateful to have been able to attend and be made so welcome. An email about the We Are International initiative came to us and we asked if we could come to observe as it is such an interesting idea.

“Our work is mainly to do with helping to get funds out to Saudi businesses which want to export and we will take what we have experienced back to Riyadh with a view to replicating elements of this campaign there.”

The latest We Are International event – the fourth since March 2013 - focused on grants, funding and no-charge assistance for exporters and featured talks from UKTI Yorkshire and the Humber international trade manager, Philip Kelly, who discussed UKTI funding available for a range of activities including essential travel, market research and attending overseas trade shows.

Leeds City Region is the largest economic area in the country outside London, covering the 10 local authority areas of, Barnsley Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, Selby, Wakefield and York.

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