The Department for International Trade has launched a new grant scheme designed to support UK firms to expand internationally.
Called the Internationalisation Fund, grants of between £1,000 and £9,000 will be made available to eligible firms covering a wide range of international business activities, from export consultancy to digital marketing.
Businesses will need to cover between 40-50% of the costs themselves with the grant covering the rest and can be applied to activities including:
- Market research
- IP advice
- Translation services
- International social media/SEO
- Trade fairs (where no TAP funding is available)
- Independent market visits
- Consultancy and other international commercial services
The eligibility criteria are:
- The company must be based in England
- The company must be a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) with up to 250 employees
- No more than 25% of the business is owned by an enterprise that is not an SME
- Annual turnover does not exceed €50 million or annual balance sheet does not exceed €43 million
Funding to support expert consultancy from Go Exporting
The new grant scheme can be applied to services offered by Go Exporting, including our export consultancy services and international digital marketing campaigns.
- Learn more about our export consultancy services
- Learn more about our international digital marketing services
The UK has failed to reach a post-Brexit agreement with Norway over the rights for UK vessels to access Norway’s sub-Arctic waters.
With the UK leaving the European Common Fisheries Policy at the start of the year and now dealing directly with Norway, an agreement couldn’t be reached after the UK government’s ‘fair offer’ was rejected.
Norway’s waters, known for cod catches worth some £32m in 2018, had been fair game for UK fleets for decades.
However, as Norway is itself not an EU member state, the trade agreement with the EU didn’t cover a continuation of these rights. And, despite last year both agreeing to a system of cooperation post-Brexit, a deal couldn’t be reached despite weeks of talks.
Jane Sandell, chief executive of UK Fisheries, said that the talks had failed to even maintain the current rights that have been in place for decades.
She said: “In consequence, there will be no British-caught Arctic cod sold through chippies for our national dish.
“It will all be imported from the Norwegians, who will continue to sell their fish products to the UK tariff-free, while we are excluded from these waters. Quite simply, this is a disgrace and a national embarrassment.”
Read more: Food and drink exports crippled by Brexit and lockdowns
A spokesperson from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that agreements would only be reached if they were in the interest of the UK fishing industry.
They said that: “We put forward a fair offer on access to UK waters and the exchange of fishing quotas, but we have concluded that our positions remain too far apart to reach an agreement this year,” they added.
“Norway is a key partner and we will continue to work with them over the course of the year.”
