DTI award helps green exports
15 Jan 2000
A new scheme to help the British environmental technology industry improve its export performance is set to receive funding from the Department of Trade and Industry. The award is part of the DTI's `Sector Challenge' initiative, which is distributing over £35million to a series of projects designed to improve competitiveness.
The green technology initiative, put forward by the Environmental Industries Commission, will set up an export services company. This will gather, organise and distribute market intelligence and information on specific business opportunities for UK firms in export markets, explains EIC director Adrian Wilkes. The DTI will provide £272,500 to support the scheme.
The UK's environmental technology suppliers need help, Wilkes claims, as they are not performing as well as their competitors. `British firms are very small and have difficulty competing internationally, resulting in missed opportunities to create new jobs in the UK. The US, Germany and Japan have already recognised this new industry's importance, and have developed very supportive export promotion policies.'
Other Sector Challenge winners include a project to set up and implement a framework for `lifelong learning' in the chemical industry, and schemes to boost UK pumps exports and to reduce imports of valves and actuators.
