The boss of an innovative Norfolk business has taken her export ambitions into her own hands by organising her own trade mission to Poland.
Valerie Watson-Brown, of Norwich-based Fresh Pod, was challenged by UKTI to launch her own export fact-finding mission after she was disappointed by the government body's trade mission to Denmark.
And now she is calling on agri-food firms to join her on a contact-building trip to the Eastern European nation in a bid to forge new trade links abroad.
The three-day trip, from July 1 to July 3, will include meet-the-buyer exhibitions, an embassy reception and an introduction to the Polish markets.
It comes after Mrs Watson-Brown first came into contact with Eastern European enterprises at German food trade event Fruit Logistica, where she was boosting the profile of Fresh Pod – a filtration device that prolongs the life of flowers, vegetables and fruit.
She said: 'Our exploration of market opportunities in Europe for Fresh Pod took us to Fruit Logistica in Berlin where many of our significant enquiries originated from Poland.
'We also struck up a very interesting dialogue with a Polish commerce contact, and that got us thinking about the wealth of opportunity that might exist for other agri-food businesses in and around East Anglia.'
She added: 'We got in touch with UKTI because we wanted to explore our export opportunities. They put us on their Passport to Export programme where we went through a very basic workshops to decide what our strategy was going to be.
'The next UKTI trade mission was to Denmark, and while it was a great trip, it was very much a mission to find out what the country was about rather than focusing on specific business markets.
'When we got back we were a little disillusioned by it because we didn't meet a lot of people in the food sector. That was when I said to UKTI 'why don't you have a more food specific trip and pick companies from this region to meet companies from a specific region in Poland'.'
She added: 'Exporting can be a bit of a minefield though help and support especially in the early days can turn a stressful and sometimes off putting experience into a real learning curve, missing the otherwise unseen pitfalls and lessening the risk of failure.'
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