If I mention Cheshire you may think of a leafy county, the beautiful city of Chester with its Roman walls, the Cheshire set or even footballers’ wives. Personally I just think of it as my natural backyard so I must declare a bit of an interest as I write this blog.
The truth about Cheshire is perhaps a little different. Astra Zeneca, Bentley, Urenco, Siemens and Essar are amongst a plethora of top names manufacturing high quality products and exporting them all over the world. You may not have heard of Essar but it’s a major Indian conglomerate that recently bought the Stanlow oil refinery from Shell for $1.3bn. They employ over 1000 people and have ambitious plans to invest in the plant for the future. At least three of the names above are foreign direct investment firms and demonstrate the attractiveness of the UK as a destination for investment and Cheshire in particular. I read today about Bentley’s sales to China now overtaking their sales to the UK for the first time, to become second after only the USA. What an achievement!
Cheshire is the 9th largest economy in the UK and has great expertise in biomedical/pharma, chemicals, automotive, energy and engineering. I recently met the people from the newly formed Local Enterprise Partnership in Cheshire and they would like to see more businesses in the county beginning their journey into exporting. This is, of course, music to my ears. There is huge scope in the economy for more businesses to start exporting. I’m issuing a challenge to firms to take a look at the opportunities that exist in overseas markets, to benefit from the improvements in productivity and resilience that exporters have and to become more adaptable to differing market conditions and more innovative as a result.
I’m looking forward to seeing more international business in Cheshire and hope that the rest of my region will follow suit.