Export Week: Gloucestershire is open for international trade

In support of UKTI’s Export Week, we asked David Owen, Chief Executive of GFirst LEP to explain more about exports throughout the county and the work of the Local Enterprise Partnership for Gloucestershire to significantly increase them:

In support of UKTI’s Export Week, we asked David Owen, Chief Executive of GFirst LEP to explain more about exports throughout the county and the work of the Local Enterprise Partnership for Gloucestershire to significantly increase them:

“For those that don’t know GFirst LEP, we are the Local Enterprise Partnership for Gloucestershire. Set up by central Government in 2011 to work with local businesses, local voluntary organisations and local authorities, the role of GFirst LEP is to drive sustainable economic growth in the county, and by doing so, create jobs and business opportunities.

Working with our partners in the private, public and voluntary sectors, the Strategic Economic Plan outlines the economic priorities in the county and the investment projects needed to address them so that we can achieve the ambitious vision that by 2022, Gloucestershire will be a county with even more world-class businesses and a reputation for starting, growing, attracting and retaining a diverse range of companies.

Gloucestershire already has an enviable presence of world-class businesses choosing to base their headquarter operations here, fortified even more with a solid base of manufacturing companies.  However, in order to strengthen the local economy, we still need to encourage and support new start-ups and assist our local businesses to produce more and export more. Gloucestershire is the highest rated county in the UK for employing people in export potential industries, and we already have a bedrock of astounding export success stories in the county such as Green Fuels based in Cheltenham. As the world’s leading and longest established manufacturer of biodiesel processors, Green Fuels export 90% of its products overseas.  Seeing the emerging markets as a huge potential, it recently set up a plant in Bali, Indonesia, following its recent successes in Australia and South Africa.

Exporting opportunities are not just the domain of large established manufacturing companies, we are also witnessing many small and medium enterprises (SME) successfully exporting their services and products overseas;  Oli Christie, who set up Neon play, a mobile games studio 3 years ago and recent winner of a Queen’s Award for Innovation, exports nearly three-quarters of their 55 million downloads to over 160 countries.

Last year, we were delighted to host a visit by Lord Green, the Minister of State for Trade and Investment who was given a tour of Renishaw’s state-of-the-art site in Wotton-under-Edge and was shown a range of the company’s high technology dimensional measuring systems. Some 94% of Renishaw’s sales are derived from exports, with China, USA, Germany and Japan being their largest markets.

Government statistics show that China’s import market could be worth over £3 trillion by 2020 and if the UK maintains its market share, UK exports to China will be worth just over £30 billion by 2020.  To explore trading links with China and Gloucestershire firms, we recently hosted a trade delegation visit of six senior Government officials from Chengdu City in the Wuhou District of China visiting Gloucester. Culminating in a partnership agreement to explore reciprocal trading opportunities, work is well underway to leverage this relationship and forge others in different provinces throughout China through the valued work of Qing Lin, one of our volunteer Ambassadors and founders of Join In China; a company set up exclusively to make it easier to trade with China.

Through the work of 11 business sector groups and nearly 600 volunteer Ambassadors, the Strategic Economic Plan builds on the current strengths of the county and has outlined a number of core initiatives to secure an economic future for Gloucestershire.  One of these initiatives is the Growth Hub that will open its doors to the business community in October 2014.

The Hub, is a unique partnership between GFirst LEP and the University of Gloucestershire that will provide a wide range of innovative and tailored business services specifically designed to boost the development of world-class companies, increase exports and fast-track entrepreneurial start-ups with high-growth potential.

The aspirations of the Growth Hub will be to provide a one-stop approach and offer a diverse range of coordinated business services in conjunction with a number of local service providers and national advisory bodies. The Growth Hub will provide a tailored business service for those companies and start-ups with a potential for high growth. This will work on the basis of understanding a company’s specific goals, drivers and requirements and working with a business to formulate a tailored package of support and deliver against it.

Delivering services from the University’s Oxstalls campus in Gloucester, the plans for the Growth Hub include the creation of a network of resource centres across the county using existing facilities and the development of an online business portal. This combined approach of online resources and face to face delivery will offer a dedicated programme of export services in addition to one-to-one consultations, access to business research and consultancy support and skills placement programmes including work experience and apprenticeships.

For those companies that are serious and committed to long-term growth or that have aspirations for high-growth, they need to consider exports. For this reason, we are delighted to partner with the University of Gloucestershire to provide the Growth Hub which will be crucial for demystifying the channels of trading overseas and to help companies take advantage of support and advice to explore their export potential.

One of the major export areas for growth potential in Gloucestershire and the rest of the the UK, is the exporting of Business and Professional Services overseas, such as legal and accountancy services. Ruth Dooley, a partner in Hazlewoods, a firm of chartered accountants who leads GFirst LEP’s Business and Professional Services (BPS) sector, recently chaired a workshop session with the main objective to provide input into the Government’s new Professional and Business Services strategy “Growth is Our Business”. Discussing the strategy, the group were able to explore ways of increasing the lucrative opportunity of exports in Business and Professional Services’ sector. Although still in its early stages, the group is working hard to enhance international competitiveness for this sector and reduce trade barriers in the county.  

Finally, if there’s a market here for goods and services, there’s almost certainly a market overseas. There’s a lot of support and advice available to companies for exporting, especially from the UKTI, so I’d urge businesses to seek help and be inspired from Export Week.”

Find out more about UKTI Export Week here.