FDBusiness.com

The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) today announced its activities during next week’s Open To Export Food & Drink Focus Week, a joint-initiative between UK Trade & Investment and industry to support food and drink businesses with expansion into new markets. The Food & Drink Focus Week will run from 23-27 September. Its highlights will include two free-of-charge live webinars geared towards inspiring and informing small and medium-sized businesses to be proactive on exports.

FDF’s Director of Communications, Terry Jones, will introduce the first of these webinars on Tuesday 24 September. The webinar, “Food & Drink Exporting: Top British brands share their stories”, will feature presentations from successful exporters Hawkshead Relish and Typhoo Tea. The speakers will explain how they got started, detail the benefits of export to their businesses and provide top tips for SMEs hoping to replicate their success. In what promises to be a truly interactive session, participants will take part in opinion polls between presentations and will also have a chance to put their questions to the panel during live Q&A. 

The webinars will be supported by a range of new content on Open to Export including case studies, exporting guides, an events calendar and links to organisations able to provide support. FDF, in partnership with the Food & Drink Exporters Association, will also be publishing ‘10 Steps to Export Success’, a new, free downloadable guide for food and drink SMEs.

Terry Jones, Director of Communications at the Food and Drink Federation, said:

“Food and drink is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector and consistently outperforms other manufacturing UK sectors on exports. However, with only a small number of food and drink SMEs taking a proactive approach to exports, there remains a considerable opportunity to further improve the sector’s performance.

“To help inspire SMEs to venture out into new markets, FDF is proud to collaborate in Open To Export’s Food & Drink Focus Week. The webinars in particular offer a great opportunity for SMEs to gain an insight into the practicalities of exports and I look forward to a lively and informative discussion.”