Fox launches Northern Powerhouse International Week
International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox is today launching Northern Powerhouse International Week, kick-starting five days of activity shining a light on northern enterprise, innovation and global connectivity.
Encouraging northern businesses to export, grow and make global connections, the Department for International Trade (DIT) claims to have helped secure exports worth more than £58bn in the year to September 2017 from companies based in the North of England and helped attract foreign investment creating 15,000 new jobs in 2016-17.
Fox said: “My international economic department will continue to help build on the strengths of the north – providing support to businesses throughout their export journey and working hard to attract even more foreign investment into the Northern Powerhouse.”
The International Week is part of a series of events supporting the government’s ambition to boost the Northern Powerhouse economy by investing in education and skills, enterprise, innovation, connectivity, transport, culture and trade and investment.
The week will see three separate trade missions of northern businesses, 49 in total, to India and the UAE.
A delegation of international TV executives will be attending the BBC Worldwide Showcase in Liverpool, with some 700 buyers viewing thousands of hours of content in specially constructed digi booths.
Meanwhile, the Northern Powerhouse Export Awards 2018 will take place on 22 February bringing together exporters from across the Northern Powerhouse to celebrate their export achievements and inspire others from the region to export around the world.
During the week, northern companies will travel to Gulfood in Dubai, the world’s largest food trade show, to demonstrate the North’s food and drink sector where exports reached £3bn in the year to September 2017.
Pharmaceutical businesses will also be heading on a life sciences mission to India, and a tech delegation will visit Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore – known as the Silicon Valley of India with its global technology hub.
The Department for International Trade highlighted the exporting success of Yorkshire business Dependable Trading, which has seen exponential growth after successfully targeting overseas markets including Europe, the USA, and Australia.
The Leeds-based online lighting retailer, founded in 2013, specialises in a range of lighting products including LED, fluorescent and halogen bulbs.
Dependable Trading has increased exports from five percent of its turnover in 2014 to more than 40% today. Around 50% of its exported goods are sold to Germany, 25% to France and eight percent to the USA.
The remaining 17% of its exports are sold across Australia, New Zealand and other European countries.
The company began working with DIT in 2014 to devise an exporting strategy that involved targeting the overseas arms of e-commerce outlets including Amazon and eBay. Dependable Trading had sales of £2.5m last year and expects this figure to have risen to £3.3m by the end of the current tax year in April.
