The city of York has set out its stall to become an international city, one of the top five UK cities, and in the top ten in Europe. Business editor JULIE HAYES reports.

IN ORDER for York to be a leading light in Europe, city leaders have set the ambition to have 15 per cent of its businesses exporting by 2015.

Currently, only seven per cent of the city’s businesses are exporting, and in the current climate international trade is the phrase on everyone’s lips.

The Government’s agency for encouraging and supporting businesses to trade internationally, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), held its first North Yorkshire International Trade Week last month to prime businesses to go global and pursue opportunities in buoyant international markets.

The week, held in association with York, North Yorkshire & East Riding Enterprise Partnership, attracted representatives from more then 150 companies to a series of workshops and seminars, including a day-long Latin American Roadshow at the Royal York Hotel that outlined opportunities in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico with a team of trade advisors who normally operate on the ground in Central and South America.

Mark Robson, UKTI International Trade Director for Yorkshire and the Humber, said: “We wanted the week to provide a real catalyst for more North Yorkshire businesses, and SMEs in particular, to discover what’s out there, whet their appetite for international success and ultimately realise their global potential.”

Bowness & Bowness

Bowness & Bowness sells hand-painted wallpapers to individual customers, hotels and retailers around the world from its base in Riccall, near Selby.

The business, which employs four full-time staff and a part-time worker, already exports to America, Europe and Australasia, and has now set its sights on Russia, China and Japan, where wallpaper is in vogue.

Between them, they have the largest wallpaper markets in the world, and western tastes are in fashion, surpassing traditional oriental designs.

Leigh Bowness, managing director, said: “The plan is to get into those three markets as soon as possible. Wallpaper is very fashionable at the moment and who’s to say when it will go out of fashion again, so we need to act as soon as possible to maximise the possibility of selling the wallpaper over there. The fact that it’s handmade in England and designed by a British designer, all those aspects are becoming more desirable in those countries.”

The business was started by Leigh’s sister, Deborah Bowness, who came up with the concept for the wallpaper while studying at the Royal College of Art in the 1990s.

She started selling her designs – all based around a trompe d’oeil of an item on the wallpaper made to look like it belongs in the room, such as a chair, bookcase or even a bird cage – as a sole trader.

Leigh, who trained in PR and marketing, but pursued a career as a firefighter, joined her sister in expanding the business in 2008 from a room in their parents’ house in Stillingfleet. In 2010 they made it a limited company and while Deborah designs in a studio in Hastings, Leigh runs the day-to-day business from a studio in Riccall, where the designs are digitally printed before being silk screen painted with colour and hand finished.

Last year, the business was able to invest in its own digital printer, after winning a contract to supply paper for every single room in a new hotel in Georgia.

The order enabled them to buy their own machinery, which has lowered costs and offer a speedier service to customers than when the specialist printing was outsourced to a company in London.

The company’s latest export success has been Croatia, where it has seen an explosion of orders since trade magazine Elle Decoration’s Croatian version nominated it for best international wall covering.

Leigh said: “New sales and enquiries from Croatia are coming in thick and fast. We didn’t plan that, but we’re not going to miss out on the opportunity.”

They now have somebody over there selling them on our behalf and are opening a webshop with an international shipping function.

Within the next year, Leigh said they hope to increase the number of staff they employ, growing the business through selling other domestic items, such as lampshades, cushions and stationery, designed to add to the trompe d’oeil in the wallpaper.

Industrial Textiles & Plastics (ITP)

Industrial Textiles & Plastics, a 20-person research and development centre in Easingwold, is currently hoping to win a competition being held by the UKTI to launch a new product in international markets.

ITP, which develops protective engineered textiles, already generates about 20 per cent of its £5 million turnover through exporting to markets including Scandinavia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada and Australia.

The business will compete in a regional pitching competition on March 14 to find the best export idea, which will win a free travel grant and business support.

Peter Winter, export director, said the company had developed a new universal geo-membrane, used to treat land which has been contaminated by heavy industries for rebuilding. He said: “Throughout the world, there are areas which have been contaminated due to industrial process, in mining for instance, you end up with heavy metals, which are dangerous to human health, as well as methane and radon gas.

“One way of treating the situation if we’re going to build over them is to cover them with a geo-membrane which is completely impermeable to those contaminants.”

Although geo-membranes already exist, specific membranes are required to address specific contaminants.

Mr Winter said: “What we’re offering is something that no one has been able to offer before, which really is universal. It’s as impermeable as you could hope it could be, to hundreds of chemicals and gases.”

Furthermore, the company has developed a computer programme which can calculate, from a soil analysis detailing the mixture of chemicals and gases in the site, just how good the membrane will be against the contaminants.

Mr Winter said: “The largest market by far is the United States, and we see Canada as a stepping stone where we can learn from good and bad things before we enter the US market.”

The company is also targeting Australia and Eastern Europe, which between them have created an awful lot of contaminated land, yet which have a growing concern for the environment and the hazards caused by the waste left in the soil.

Prime Education Consultancy

Prime Education Consultancy, an education recruitment and consultancy firm based at York Science Park, has signed a contract with one of the world’s biggest petrochemical companies in Saudi Arabia.

The business, set up by husband and wife team Sera and Tevfik Sekerci in 2004 to assist international students with further education in the UK, will now deliver English language training to the employees of one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest companies.

Tefvik said: “Originally, the Saudi company was looking for a university partner rather than a private company. They had approached the University of York. The university didn’t want to handle the practical side of the language school but just to have an academic input, so we approached the university and made an agreement with them to run the project together.

“It’s quite a big business for us. We’re going to send five or six of our staff from here to the premises in Saudi to do some analysis, see their requirements and prepare the project. We hope in June they’ll open the training premises specifically for the English language teaching for their employees. Once the premises are ready, we’ll take over the whole project from them and train 800 students every year.”