DEBATE INTERNATIONALISATION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
PRESENT: Richard Slater
Lancashire Business View (Chair)
James Bracewell GA Pet Food Partners
Aisha Ford LiNa Energy
Lynne Gillen Department for International Trade
Matthew Guest UCLan
David Hammond Chiptech UK
Paul May TRL Software
Manesh Pandya
ELE Advanced Technology Sue Roberts
Lancashire Enterprise Partnership
TAKING ON THE WORLD
Lancashire Enterprise Partnership has set out a ten-year roadmap for global growth. Its ambitious ‘Internationalisation Strategy’ looks to supercharge exports, drive innovation and attract more overseas investment and visitors. We partnered with them to bring our panel to ELE Advanced Technologies in Nelson to examine the plan and the role businesses can play in creating a truly global Lancashire
Why should Lancashire businesses look to export?
SR: Lancashire is underperforming in terms of the rest of its partners in the Northern Powerhouse. We really need to up our game because it just brings so much into the economy.
The internationalisation strategy is a ten-year plan that needs to be delivered in partnership - one organisation isn’t capable at delivering it on its own - so every organisation within Lancashire can play its part.
We have a working document that gives an ambition for Lancashire – what we could achieve if we all worked on our little part.
The strategy has five pillars: export, foreign direct investment, capital investment, innovation and the visitor economy. Within each of those are six sectors and then we have a group of countries that are our target markets.
Each pillar has its own action plan, and what we’re talking about is how we collate and promote Lancashire on an international scale, as well as locally and nationally, in terms of exports.
LG: Look at it from the top level, how we grow the economy and how important exports are
to the county. The latest Lancashire figures show £10.2bn of goods and services exported in 2020, with £4.6bn of that figure made up of services, which is really surprising for a county that’s always been predominantly manufacturing based. It highlights how crucial this all is.
At a company level, there are various motives to export. Growth through new markets, increased sales, enhanced productivity, reduced reliance on a domestic market, to encourage specialisation, counter seasonality and increase product lifecycles. Also, to get a competitive advantage or become more innovative. The list is endless really.
For a lot of companies that I work with there is also the intense pride of the staff. It helps them to retain and grow their current workforce.
PM: That is an excellent list, the other thing I’d add to it from having been an exporter for years is that it’s fun.
JB: We’ve historically exported far afield for many years, including New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. When the opportunities arise, and people knock on our door, we’ve always said yes. More recently we’ve focused on Europe.
We turned over £160m to the end of January this year and 50 per cent of our sales come from overseas. We’ve learned by ‘doing’ and as our expertise became stronger, we’ve rolled out our model into other markets.
The Union Jack is a good trading post. Some markets respond differently and those further afield feel more strongly about it than maybe our neighbouring European markets.
DH: We’ve only been trading for three years in the UK and we’ve grown significantly, with our turnover forecast to increase from just over £7m to £22m next year. So, this year we are not going into exporting simply because of the growth we have here.
While there is a big market out there and a big pull in Europe for our products, if you grow too quickly and don’t have the resources to support it, both on the ground in the UK and within Europe, and the leadership and governance that sits with it, then ultimately, you’re going to fail.
Sometimes a big lesson in life is to say ‘no’ to business. Don’t get me wrong, we will definitely be pushing into Europe and beyond over the coming years.
Continued on page 52
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