52 DEBATE
Paul May
Aisha Ford
Matthew Guest
Lancashire is
underperforming in terms of the rest of its partners in the Northern Powerhouse. We really need to up our game
Lynne Gillen Manesh Pandya
James Bracewell Continued from page 51
MP: We’ve been in private ownership since May 2000 and at that time 80 per cent of revenues were UK based, predominantly into one customer. We have used our niche technologies to position ourselves in the market and, in terms of customer spread, 95 per cent are now outside the UK.
We went about setting our gameplan to supply the major OEMs that use our technologies in the gas turbine sector, so that’s either aerospace or industrial gas turbines for generating power.
ELE is based in Lancashire, supplying the world. Probably 80 percent of our revenues come from outside the UK. Exporting is embedded in our culture.
AF: We were founded in 2017 and we are a clean tech business. We develop solid state sodium batteries. It is about energy storage and unlocking the potential of renewable energies and we are taking the technology to the next step.
We are at the start of our journey and pre- revenue. We want to get into that export market but what stops us is not having the expertise in- house and the support in terms of ‘right, which markets can we export to?’
David Hammond
We are working closely with partners in India. We want to help the UK achieve its net zero target, but we want to export worldwide, to show countries you can produce energy renewably and it doesn’t have to be expensive, and it benefits the world.
We are trying to partner with existing manufacturers in the UK to see how they have gone ahead and jumped out of their comfort zone to export.
Over the next 12 months we need to focus. It has been a turbulent time in the UK with Brexit and it still is. There’s all this information out there on things like import and export duties but it’s all too much.
What is preventing businesses from considering export?
MG: There are big challenges at the moment. We’ve got the energy crisis that’s preventing a lot of people from having that space to think beyond the next payment challenge. There’s Brexit and the fact that it is fundamentally changing our relationship with our nearest neighbours, which are some of the closest trading partners that a lot of businesses have had. The EU is the largest trading bloc on the planet.
Sue Roberts
There is support, with elements in and around the universities and initiatives like Boost. There are elements that look at leadership skills development and a lot of this can come down having that vision.
There is also a big risk at the end of June. Most innovation support from the universities in the region will go because of the change from European funding to the Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) which is a very different set up. The universities in Lancashire are collectively thinking about how they try and work through that.
DH: There is a lot of risk at the moment. Fluctuations in currency present a huge risk, the cost of shipping is increasing as well. Those costs are going up on a monthly basis and it’s very difficult to try and budget where your costs base and your sale price is going to sit.
There’s the import challenge as well. We’ve talked about Brexit but the other elephant in the room is Covid. We’re still feeling the impact of Covid on imports and we’ve seen price increases of 200 per cent on some of the components for our products and lead times that are absolutely huge.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80
