The Magazines
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Business Quarter:
Spring 10: issue nine
If we pass subliminal messages to our readers it's because we have your interests at heart. Our undercurrent in this BQ, then, is a plea to export - even if your firm hasn't tried before.
Currency exchange rates will be favourable in many cases just now, and there is abundant knowledgeable support on offer from bodies skilled in the field, such as UK Trade and Investment. Three companies featured in this issue demonstrate how exporting is not just the cream but strawberries as well.
Hardy & Greys, a name globally synonymous with fishing, and a name renowned in Alnwick since 1872, went through crisis in the 1990s, the full extent of which is only now being publicly realised. It might have been killed off by cheaper foreign competition had not managing director Richard Sanderson imposed an overseas-led transformation.
By moving some manufacturing abroad but building other aspects of the business at home Hardy now flourishes even on competitors' home grounds. It has enlarged and upskilled the workforce, and consequently has shown annual compound growth of 19% since 2002. With a more diversified approach and an intensified coverage abroad it may well become number three in the world's angling industry. Over seven years its international business has grown 500%.
Meanwhile Liebherr safeguards Wearside jobs with an incredible 97% export activity in its 21st year at Sunderland. Liebherr builds one in four of all cranes fitted to the world's ships, and while Sunderland is one of only 30 sites belonging to the group across Europe, Sunderland is also the one that builds most of those cranes - and others besides.
Liebherr benefits from being part of international operations, of course. But also under managing director Ralph Saelzer the Sunderland business enjoys a lot of autonomy, instils very high standards of training, maintains good trade union relations, and all in all deserves a lot of the credit for its own success.
Finally, Perry Process Equipment at Newton Aycliffe shows you can win foreign business in the second-hand business too if you have someone on the staff proficient in a foreign language or two. Managing director Darrent Bentham says sales manager Julie Morris's fluency in languages largely accounts for a 60% growth of sales in Germany, and now she's turning her attention to France. Even if staff only know enough of a visitor's language to make them feel welcome in a strange surrounding that can help secure a sale apparently.
How sad, then, we must also report that at the recent otherwise successful Business Exchange North East event in Newcastle not one representative of any North East business thought it worthwhile to attend a "Doing Business in Norway" seminar. And that's a place where, bless them, they even speak our language!
Can't we try just a little harder?
Do send your contributions, ideas and pearls of wisdom to editor@bq-magazine.co.uk and, if you see us out and about, tell us what you're doing; you may just find yourself in print.
