Supporting UK companies with innovative trade finance solutions

Between 2020 and 2021, UK Export Finance (UKEF) pro­vid­ed £12.3bn to launch UK exporters into the glob­al sup­ply chains. When pri­vate finance van­ish­es and the mar­ket gets tough, UKEF is leav­ing no stone unturned to help exporters sell inter­na­tion­al­ly.

Supporting over 100,000 UK jobs

If you’re an exporter who needs financ­ing, UKEF can help. The sums involved are huge. UKEF pro­vid­ed £12.3bn dur­ing 2020–21 alone; 79% of which went to SMEs and all of it involv­ing UK sup­ply chain oper­a­tors.

The knock-on effect is mas­sive. Up to 100,000 UK jobs were sup­port­ed by UKEF in just 12 months.

This is because finance makes trade hap­pen. And UKEF pro­vides insur­ance, guar­an­tees and loans where the pri­vate sec­tor will not, backed by the strength of the government’s bal­ance sheet, to keep the wheels of trade turn­ing.

This is not just for big busi­ness. Last year, indi­vid­ual sup­port was as small as £297, all the way up to £1.1bn. With UKEF’s sup­port ready to reach hun­dreds of glob­al mar­kets, the scale of the poten­tial for UK exporters is mas­sive.

Connecting UK companies with global opportunities

Some­times know­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty exists is the first step towards unlock­ing it. And UKEF con­nects com­pa­nies with over­seas oppor­tu­ni­ties in many ways. It helps: UK busi­ness­es, large and small, to access the finance, insur­ance and guar­an­tees they need to export; over­seas investors to buy British prod­ucts and ser­vices, with direct lend­ing; com­mer­cial lenders to invest abroad, by guar­an­tee­ing their loans; UK exporters trade with peace of mind, by insur­ing them against default; glob­al busi­ness­es to expand their UK-based sup­ply chains.

To fur­ther con­nect UK busi­ness­es with over­seas oppor­tu­ni­ties and buy­ers, UKEF hosts sup­pli­er fairs. These are one-day events that place rel­e­vant UK SMEs direct­ly in front of inter­na­tion­al buy­ers, who are active­ly look­ing for UK prod­ucts and ser­vices for their over­seas projects.

The ben­e­fits for the UK are clear. In just one year, UKEF man­aged to help con­nect more than 500 UK com­pa­nies with inter­na­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties through sup­pli­er fairs before the pan­dem­ic.

One such com­pa­ny was a Scot­tish fam­i­ly-run firm, BHC Ltd., which won a £20m export con­tract to pro­vide 8,000 tonnes of steel­work and 100,000 square metres of met­al deck­ing for the Kumasi Mar­ket in Ghana after being intro­duced to a part­ner at a UKEF-run sup­pli­er fair event.

Bri­an Hewitt, man­ag­ing direc­tor at BHC Ltd says: “UKEF helped us secure this huge inter­na­tion­al con­tract. Not only has this helped our busi­ness, but it has also bol­stered the local econ­o­my dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times.”

UKEF also has a net­work of inter­na­tion­al finance exec­u­tives that engage with over­seas gov­ern­ments and multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies look­ing to buy from the UK, cre­at­ing trad­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for British busi­ness­es.

Through financ­ing, UKEF has sup­port­ed UK busi­ness­es to export to a diverse range of projects, these include pro­vid­ing guar­an­tees of £500m to finance sev­er­al off­shore wind projects in Tai­wan. One of these, the Greater Changhua 1 Off­shore Wind Farm, has a capac­i­ty of 605 MW, pow­er­ing more than 650,000 house­holds, enabling Tai­wan to gen­er­ate 20% of its pow­er from renew­able sources by 2025.

With­in the pro­vi­sion of these sites sev­er­al UK com­pa­nies ben­e­fit­ed, includ­ing Trelle­borgs from the North West and East Anglian-based firm Sea­jacks. “This con­tract is an impor­tant mile­stone for Sea­jacks,” says Sebas­t­ian Brooke, Sea­jacks’ COO. “This is the sec­ond major UKEF-backed project we have sup­plied in Tai­wan, and we are proud that British ves­sels will be installing these off­shore tur­bines that will help pow­er Taiwan’s green ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion.”

UKEF has become a shock absorber to the markets

UKEF is a pathfind­er and trea­sure hunter for clean ener­gy oppor­tu­ni­ties in hun­dreds of coun­tries glob­al­ly, with over £7bn in sus­tain­able deals since 2019. It is cur­rent­ly ranked first in the TXF glob­al sus­tain­able finance league tables for 2021, among its Export Cred­it Agency (ECA) peers.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, UKEF stepped up and became a shock absorber to the mar­kets, says Richard Simon-Lewis, a mem­ber of UKEF’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence work­ing in renew­able ener­gy and clean growth sec­tors: “It increased its capac­i­ty to sup­port exports to around 120 mar­kets mak­ing it eas­i­er to sup­port inter­na­tion­al projects with long-term growth poten­tial to increase UK trade and cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for British busi­ness.”

We’ll still offer clean energy finance throughout choppy waters

UKEF has now expand­ed its sup­port with new and upgrad­ed prod­ucts that will ben­e­fit those in the green econ­o­my. It has a hefty £2bn direct lend­ing facil­i­ty ded­i­cat­ed to financ­ing clean growth projects over­seas. It has also intro­duced more flex­i­ble prod­ucts, the Export Devel­op­ment Guar­an­tee (EDG) and the Gen­er­al Export Facil­i­ty (GEF), which give com­pa­nies vital finan­cial back­ing for their gen­er­al financ­ing needs, not only those linked to spe­cif­ic con­tracts.

UK busi­ness­es are invit­ed to con­nect with UKEF’s export finance man­agers around the UK on how to take advan­tage of these schemes, with UKEF’s exper­tise and oppor­tu­ni­ties going way beyond off­shore wind, solar PV, desali­na­tion and health­care.

Simon-Lewis says: “We know the mar­kets are not mag­i­cal­ly going to recov­er fol­low­ing the pan­dem­ic. We need to be there for those SMEs and when the going gets tough, we need to keep going and turn­ing stones over to track those oppor­tu­ni­ties down for these com­pa­nies in their hour of need.”

UKEF promis­es that this finan­cial sup­port will remain even as the reces­sion bites and pri­vate finance is hard to access, Simon-Lewis adds. “We com­ple­ment, not com­pete with the pri­vate sec­tor, or com­mer­cial banks in pro­vid­ing liq­uid­i­ty. When the mar­ket tight­ens up and the tide goes out in terms of risk appetite, that’s where ECAs come into their own.”

To find out more, please vis­it great.gov.uk/trade-finance/

Pro­mot­ed by UK Export Finance