INTERNATIONAL trade experts in Bradford are helping more first-time exporters open up overseas markets.

Chamber International has dealt with enquiries from more than 360 new exporters in the past year and issued a record 25,536 trade documents, 80 per cent of which were online for key markets including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and China.

Its online platforms received more than 500,000 visitors during the financial year.

The trade body based in Little Germany, which delivers services on behalf of chambers of commerce in West and North Yorkshire, attracted nearly 300 attendees to its courses and seminars to help firms sell overseas.

Chamber International’s export office services team also won the biggest contract to date, overseeing the entire $2.5 million contract shipping a giant poultry chilling plant from Pennine Environmental Services Ltd in Calverley to the United States.

Chamber International launched ‘edge’, a new low-cost, cloud-based toolkit which has taken two years to develop; opened its website to advertising and received its first order from Emirates Airlines.

It also forged partnerships with overseas chambers of commerce as part of the Global Business Network and started its own YouTube channel.

Chamber International also staged three We are International events for the Leeds City Region enterprise partnership attended by 161 businesses of all sizes.

Tim Bailey, Chamber International director, said: Our job is to help businesses understand what they need to do to become successful exporters at the grass roots level. We see many small, and often micro, businesses wanting to be involved in selling abroad but we need to be patient as export development can take up to three years from visiting a market.

“Yorkshire and, in particular, Leeds City Region, are among the success stories in the UK’s campaign to drive up exports.

“Even though there are significant headwinds for the global economy with China’s slowdown, the knock-on effect for commodity exporters; the Syrian conflict and business uncertainty triggered by the EU referendum, the central message that exporting is good for businesses and the UK economy is being heard in this region."

A new Lloyds Bank report says Yorkshire's SME exporters are selling fewer goods and services overseas, but expect foreign revenues to grow this year as they become more competitive.

Leigh Taylor, area director for SME banking, said: “As weakening growth in China and the Eurozone creates headwinds for some exporters, it’s unsurprising to see that less of Yorkshire's SME exporters are generating their sales overseas, but encouraging to see that some businesses are still looking to grow those international sales in the year ahead."