Leeds City Region opens up trade to 5 million daily Chinese customers for Yorkshire companies

Kaola.com, the Chinese e-commerce platform, and Leeds City Region have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a long term collaborative partnership focused on trade opportunities.

This is a result of a pilot scheme launched in September 2016; following a trade mission to China last June.

This partnership follows a six month trial, which saw 25 businesses engage with Kaola.com, with many now preparing to launch on the Chinese e-commerce platform later this year.

Kaola.com, which boats over 5 million daily users, has a customer base of over eight hundred million users and is currently providing access for over 5,000 new products and brands into the Chinese market.

Roger Marsh OBE, chair of Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP), said: “I’m pleased and excited to be signing this MOU with Kaola.com today to further enhance our relationship for our mutual benefit.

“This relationship supports both UK Government’s clear challenge of increasing the value and volume of exporters by 2020, and also the LEP’s Strategic Economic Plan for the City Region to be an environment where trading internationally is commonplace and exports provide a significant contribution to our economy.

“It was fantastic to see the positive response to the initial trial with Kaola.com, and following today’s meeting with the CEO Lei Zhang I can confirm that the business clearly acknowledges that Leeds City Region is home to manufacturers and producers of some of the best quality products in the world.

“It serves to demonstrate that if the right export opportunities are presented to our businesses in the right way – there is an enormous appetite to export into the expanding middle class market developing at pace in China.

“I hope that through this partnership even more businesses will take the opportunity to understand the enormous growth opportunities in the Far East, via Kaola.com’s easy direct procurement and export model.”

Roger Marsh added: “This initiative with kaola.com has had tremendous resonance with Hangzhou’s other hi-tech corporations located in the new high tech zone.

“Many of these businesses are world leading Chinese and Fortune 500 companies and following a series of meetings are excited by what Leeds City Region has to offer.”

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