South: Hampshire company among exporters to win UKEF support

UK Export Finance (UKEF) has published its annual report and accounts showing £43.7 million of support provided to South East exporters, resulting in over £111m worth of overseas sales.

South East companies supported by UKEF include Design and Projects, an engineering company based in Hampshire that supplies specialist railway equipment for train, metro and transit networks around the world.

When Design and Projects won an export contract worth €12 million to supply railway maintenance equipment for the Bangkok purple metro line, its customer, the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority, required advance payment, performance and warranty bonds. Such bonds typically require cash deposits, but this would have tied up from significant funds for Design and Projects, thereby restricting its resources for work on the contract itself.

UKEF provided Design and Projects’ bank with guarantees for 80% of the value of all three bonds, allowing the company to secure the bonds it needed while holding on to sufficient working capital for its other business and manufacturing activities.

Colin Brooks, managing director at Design and Projects International, said: “Since working with UKEF, we can get the financial support we need much more easily and this has allowed us to compete for major international projects, which before, we didn’t have the financial flexibility to do even though we knew we had the capability.

"Off the back of this success, we are now setting up an office in Thailand so that we can continue to grow our exporting business and take advantage of the opportunities in the Far East.”

UKEF also supported Guildford-based MR Solutions, a world-leading developer of MRI systems at the cutting-edge of MRI research and recent winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and Innovation.

When the company won a £1.2m contract with Sydney University, UKEF provided an 80% guarantee to help MR Solutions secure a working capital loan of much greater value than would have been possible without UKEF support. This afforded the company sufficient cash to fulfil the contract, which it may have otherwise had to turn down, and resulted in revenue in excess of £1m.

Kevin Darley, finance director at MR Solutions, said: “By bridging the gap when there have been intervals between our inflow and outflow of cash, UKEF support has been a real lifeline for us.”

Stuart Stoter, export finance manager for Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey (West), Hampshire, Isle of Wight, said: “UKEF’s results demonstrate our ongoing commitment to making exports happen and to finding innovative ways to meet a broader range of exporter needs. More importantly, they highlight the growing international demand for UK goods and services and the willingness for UK businesses to meet that demand.”

UKEF’s national results for 2016/17 show that it provided £3 billion of support across the UK – a 60% increase on 2015/16 – for exports to 63 countries, with 79% of the UK exporters benefiting from this support small and medium-sized enterprises. UKEF also lent a record £305 million directly to infrastructure and energy projects.

UKEF has also published its Business Plan for the next three years, which identifies a number of concrete measures that will help more UK exporters and their suppliers benefit from UKEF support, including a partnership with banks to deliver support directly to their trading customers.

The plan also states that UKEF intends to use the draw of its financing to create procurement opportunities for smaller companies in the UK supply chain, incentivising overseas buyers to look to the UK to source goods and services.

Greg Hands MP, minister for international trade, commented: “This government is putting export finance at the heart of trade promotion, and UKEF’s 2016/17 results show that the UK’s world-leading exporters are supported by a world-leading export credit agency as they look to succeed in a global marketplace. And UKEF’s new Business Plan is a clear statement of intent: Britain is open for business, and we want to help even more companies realise the world of opportunity out there.”