Member Article

Chamber International wins export support contract with Leeds City College

Chamber International has secured a major contract with Leeds City College to deliver export support to the region’s business communities.

Under The Local Response Fund (LRF), a Skills Support for the Workforce Contract managed by Leeds City College, the international trade support body will be delivering themed networking events as part of the capacity building project with export ambassadors providing practical support for novice exporters.

Local Response Fund Capacity Building activities aim to enhance sector skills knowledge, support business growth and reduce skills gaps.

Chamber International has already run a series of networking events over the last 18 months, backed by the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership’s We are international Campaign, providing practical support for dozens of novice exporters and leading directly to overseas orders.

These previous events, held in the Leeds offices of international commercial law, or professional services firms, have attracted almost 400 business people with themes including pure networking, e-commerce, accessing export funding and arranging overseas meetings.

Under the new contract from Leeds City College, using support from the European Social Fund, twice-monthly events will now be held in other towns and cities within Leeds City Region and will also work with novice exporters to identify what skills they need to help them to export successfully so a new training module can be devised.

The new events, running from now until early next year, will also allow more one-to-one discussions with export ambassadors, scheduled to be held in Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, Selby, Wakefield and York.

Chamber International director, Tim Bailey, says: “We are thrilled to be working with Leeds City College’s Local Response Fund Project as a way of helping more businesses sell overseas.

“Local businesses should take full advantage of this opportunity to get free help from some of the region’s very best exporters.”

Leeds City College’s head of external funding and business enterprise, Jennie Beaumont, says: “We are pleased to be working with Chamber International to help facilitate the growth of export and global trade across the Leeds City Region and I would encourage businesses in the region to get involved and take advantage of this opportunity to gain practical help and support.”

Chamber International assists chambers of commerce with a wide range of specialist international trade services and is also supporting Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) with its We Are International export campaign, which aims to being an extra £1.6 billion to ten local authority areas and create thousands of new jobs in the next five years.

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