On 10 June 2020, the UK Government announced a sweeping range of measures to help boost trade and establish the UK tech industry as a global player. The new measures will also ensure the industry can take advantage of new Free Trade Agreements with countries such as Australia.
The new measures, jointly announced by the Department for International Trade (DIT) and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), will increase tech exports to fast-growing international markets (including Australia).
The full range of measures include the launch of an £8m Digital Trade Network (DTN) for Asia Pacific, a joint DIT-DCMS network, to support UK tech businesses to internationalise in countries such as Australia, attract capital and talent to the UK and enhance UK digital economy collaborations internationally.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a number of tech subsectors are seeing increased demand as a result of Coronavirus – including EdTech, MedTech, fintech, and cyber security – leading to specific export opportunities in these subsectors. More generally (and most promising) is the recent research by Sage UK which shows that 37% of UK SMEs are looking to grow their trade in international markets over the next 3 months. Given the present pandemic, that’s great news!
Kepdowrie Chambers has already assisted hundreds of UK-based companies with their “homework” and due diligence into the Australian market, including setting up and expanding their businesses in Australia. In particular, we have already observed that expressions of interest in the Australian market have grown steadily ever since the 2016 EU Referendum and exponentially since Brexit (notwithstanding the pandemic), so please get in touch if you’d like to discuss Brexporting to, or Brexpanding in, Australia. We’re here to make sure that the learning-curve is not a challenge and you can quickly get on with the more important task of winning new customers.