00:00Hello, my name's Ian Griffin, Deputy Editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I've just
00:13hosted this Made in the Midlands, Sold to the World, Exporter Roadshow here at the Rolls-Royce
00:20Flight Operations Centre at East Midlands Airport.
00:24It was an event that was held in association with the Department of Business and Trade.
00:28We had 22 fantastic speakers, including the Export Minister, Gareth Thomas, and the East
00:36Midlands Mayor, Clare Ward.
00:40We looked at how to export, what markets to target, what compliance you needed to be aware
00:49of, what certification, what paperwork, the costs, the help that you need.
00:55We heard that there was a lot of low price or even free advice from the Department of
01:02Business and Trade on offer.
01:05Great event, let's hear what some of our speakers had to say about it.
01:13It's International Trade Week and I really wanted to come to the Midlands because the
01:18Midlands is one of the great areas of the UK that focuses on exports.
01:26It's a part of the UK famous for innovation and to be here at the Rolls-Royce factory
01:33only underlines the message about the significance of the Midlands for exports.
01:39We think there's still a lot more that can be done to help small businesses in particular,
01:44but also larger businesses to think about new export markets, new ways of raising income
01:50and growing their business.
01:53The roadshow today here in the East Midlands is about talking to businesses that are ready
01:59to take the next leap forward for their business to find new markets maybe, to start exporting
02:05perhaps for a very first time, and to be made aware of what support there is out there to
02:13help them on that journey, whether it's export champions, people in business who've done
02:18the hard yards already of finding export markets, whether it's international trade advisors
02:24that the Department of Business and Trade has access to, or a range of other support
02:29that we can offer to businesses that want to export.
02:33My name's Jane Sheppard, I'm a Director of Sheppard PR, so we're based in the Midlands
02:38and we've been going for 25 years.
02:40Our main sectors are in sustainable construction, we do travel and we do a lot of trade association
02:46PR, but we're also quite unusual in the fact that for a service business in our sector
02:51we do export.
02:52So we work in Austria, we've been working in Austria now for almost 10 years, and we
02:57also work this year starting in Portugal.
03:00So from our perspective, sometimes I think small businesses can think export's out of
03:05their league, it's too difficult.
03:08Actually my message that I was trying to get over today is that it isn't, it's actually
03:12really quite straightforward to export as a service business.
03:16You are just taking what you do and rolling it out.
03:19The main thing is that you focus on one country at a time and you really get to know that
03:24country.
03:25You do forensic research on it and you really focus on how you can really help and support
03:30that.
03:31My name's Malcolm Hall, I'm a Managing Director and owner of Allfast Industrial Supplies based
03:36in Mansfield.
03:37I founded Allfast from the back bedroom of the family home in 2006, initially supplying
03:42specialist fastenings to the UK automotive industry, but we diversified at the height
03:46of recession and started to export.
03:50We find exporting at one point was vital to our survival, it's now key to our success
03:56and growth.
03:57Bringing it up to date, we're now 195,000 SKUs products on our website, which is supplied
04:03to over 95 countries.
04:06It's been good talking to businesses very directly here about some of the challenges
04:11they face, some of the concerns they have about what direction different export markets
04:18might go in.
04:20And certainly one of the areas that we're focusing on this International Trade Week
04:25is what can we do to encourage businesses to think, despite all the difficulties that
04:30there have been in trading with Europe, to actually see our nearest neighbours as a great
04:37market opportunity going forward.
04:39We know there are challenges and we want to try and address some of those challenges in
04:43terms of trading with Europe.
04:45We're having a bit of a reset moment with Europe at the moment and we're getting into
04:50some then next year some serious negotiations about an SPS agreement to help bring food
04:57prices and barriers to trade around food down.
05:00We're going to look at mutual recognition of professional qualifications to make things
05:05a bit easier for businesses in that area in terms of accessing talent.
05:09And then we're looking at the whole trade and cooperation agreement deal, how can we
05:14make that work better going forward.
05:16So I think there will be real opportunities in the longer term, but in the short term
05:24there are still opportunities for British business in Europe and we want to help companies
05:29begin to think those challenges through.
05:32When you do export I think it has a number of benefits really.
05:37It gives you more resilience, you've got more eggs in your basket.
05:40It can strengthen your own reputation in the UK and you're also learning from international
05:46experiences that you can bring back home.
05:49For staff there's great opportunities, I love the fact that our apprentices and our
05:54staff have been going out working in Vienna, working in Portugal, working in Innsbruck.
06:00That's really really rewarding for me to see that, to see people benefit from those opportunities.
06:07We find that the Department for Business and Trade have been key to helping us when we're
06:13dealing with customers overseas in various different markets, along with the Chamber
06:17of Commerce and specialist freight forwarders.
06:20We are finding more and more that customers in new overseas markets that contact us are
06:25wanting us to use our dedicated freight forwarders to consolidate shipments overseas, which is
06:31ideal for us when dealing with specific paperwork and requirements for different market sectors.
06:36In terms of support, the number one thing is that the Department for Business and Trade
06:40is available here to help and a lot, a huge amount, the vast majority of the support they
06:47deliver is free.
06:49They've got a massive untapped capacity for small businesses like myself to get to know
06:55what's available in terms of market experts, country experts, Embassy Network is hugely
07:02hugely supportive.
07:05Britain's blessed with a really established Embassy Network around the world and they've
07:09got experts who want to help and really the message is, tap into the Department for Business
07:15and Trade, look into ideas of how you can export and take the step.
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