When you bundle all of that into the mix, I have to say it is another reason why we haven’t accelerated into Europe and why we’re leaving it until next year.
LG: When you look at the strategy, one of the massive things for us was to bring all the different support strands together. We looked at all the risks, the perceived barriers and we spoke to different companies of different sizes across different sectors. The result was a huge list. But when we looked at the support available, nearly every aspect or barrier was covered.
The fact is you need somebody dedicated to exports, whether it’s somebody externally or within your company. Because if export is important to you it can’t be a Friday afternoon activity. It has to be front and centre of the activities you do.
PM: TRL exists to make transport better, cleaner, greener, safer, more accessible. We are a social enterprise, every penny we earn in profit gets reinvested into research and development to make transport better in some way. A third of our £20m revenue is export.
We’ve got the energy crisis that’s preventing a lot of people from having that space to think beyond the next payment challenge
The majority of it is to the developing world, low-and-middle-income countries. We sell road safety into these territories. We have a road safety software package which analyses statistics on where accidents happen, why they happen and it gives recommendations on better lighting, lower speed limits, crash barriers, better surfaces.
The challenge is to break into more established markets, especially European ones. We did a lot of European work on standards, clearly we’re not going to be first port of call for that any longer and we can’t do a lot about it.
Exporting is part of the sales plan. If you’re good at selling your product round a corner, you can sell it across the globe. I understand there are a few more hurdles to jump over. But in the UK, we are only one per cent of the people on this planet. Why only focus on one per cent when you’ve got 99 per cent to go at?
MP: The reason we’ve been successful in the international market is because we have some niche technologies and capabilities.
It may be difficult to export but we were exporting long before Brexit. When it came along, we did a lot of the preparation to ensure that it didn’t impact us, including getting a logistics expert in who understood the customs and duties and the paperwork.
In fact, that has been a benefit because we actually advise our customers of the custom clearance requirements to get stuff from the UK into their ports.
If I was in LiNa Energy’s position I would target one country, one approach, where you would learn all the principles, whether it’s documentation, IP protection, or marketing.
We got a new customer in South Korea right in the middle of the pandemic. Our reputation out there made them look for us. We presented to them on ‘Teams’ and we got a huge contract out of it.
It just goes to show that despite all the challenges, if you find the right niche and the right capability and you focus, you can make it a success.
What is Lancashire’s pitch? How do we persuade businesses from across the globe to invest here?
SR: When it comes foreign direct investment we could do better. We are the largest economy in the North West outside the city regions. Foreign owned companies in Lancashire make up about one per cent of our companies but they contribute 17 per cent in terms of GVA.
Everything they do is more productive, so we want those foreign owned companies to come and then stay here. In terms of the sectors that we’re looking at, they are digital, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, low carbon technologies and food and drink.
Our target markets are Germany, USA, France, Sweden, India, Canada and the Netherlands. We’ve identified them but we also need to be really specific about what we are marketing.
I’ll give you an example that comes under digital and advanced manufacturing: drones. We’ve got the ‘Drone Zone’ at UCLan and we have the fourth largest aerospace cluster in the world here. UCLan was the first to skin a drone with graphene. So, we can do drones.
We are really promoting the use of civil drones because of the impact that’s going to have.
There’s that last mile delivery and logistics. Drones can also be used in agriculture and Lancashire is 80 per cent rural.
I’m just doing a proposition on what Lancashire is good at in the drone sector and what the opportunities are for other companies and the rest of the world to come and take advantage of that.
JB: If the support that we’ve had as a business locally could be replicated and shared anywhere, that would certainly make our part of the world an attractive place to consider locating. It would be a real selling point.
If export is important to you it can’t be a Friday afternoon activity. It has to be
front and centre of the activities you do
AF: I think it is the pride and the connection. It is also the support that attracts and keeps businesses here. It should be shouted from the rooftops.
MG: UCLan is 38,000 people, about 3,000 staff, the rest students. That’s across four campuses in Preston, Burnley, West Lakes and Cyprus. That’s another part of the UK’s export story - international students.
MP: One of the strands in making sure that you get FDI coming in is how you’re going to create innovation, how you’re going to create growth. You need the skill base, you need the competence. That’s what makes it attractive and that’s what we should be working on.
DH: If I was a foreign investor looking at the UK and at an international strategy based on a business here that’s going to export out, then the immigration policy that we have, I would see that as a blocker for sure.
SR: There is support for businesses. On the LEP website we have all the sector plans and information about things like Boost, the chambers. We’ve got a key account manager that exclusively works with foreign owned companies that will help them if they want to make a pitch to their overseas board to invest in Lancashire, and we’ve got funding as well.
Building a globally competitive
county focused on: • Exports • Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) • Capital Investment • Innovation • The Visitor Economy
Download the Lancashire Internationalisation Strategy from
www.lancashirelep.co.uk
LANCASHIREBUSINESSVIEW.CO.UK
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