SMALL BUSINESS
BRITAIN’S food and drink exports are soaring and a third of UK businesses expect to increase their international activity in 2015, according to new research.
Trade body the Institute of Export said the UK food and drink export industry is now worth £19billion a year, with a record 2,500 companies selling their produce to 150 countries – and last year even saw a 30 per cent increase in the volume of tea exported to China.
Meanwhile Global payment business Western Union’s latest quarterly economic confidence survey, seen exclusively by The Mail on Sunday, found the proportion of businesses ‘very confident’ about the economic climate has increased to 15 per cent, compared with seven per cent for the same quarter last year.
It revealed 83 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises felt ‘confident’ about the UK’s economic climate. Nearly half said they had increased the number of countries they do business with in the last 12 months. More than a third said they are confident their international activity will increase in the next year.
Henrietta Lovell, founder of the Rare Tea Company in London, says most of her revenue comes from Asia. She said firms should realise that ‘the British brand’ is revered abroad.
China is an increasingly popular export market, with the proportion of UK SMEs exporting increasing from 9 per cent in the first quarter of 2014 to 16 per cent in the fourth quarter.
A quarter of UK SMEs’ revenue comes from exports, far more than that of other Western economies such as the US (18 per cent) and Canada (12 per cent).
More than a third of SMEs say that exports comprise a greater percentage of revenues than 12 months ago. Europe remains the largest export market.