Businesses in the Highlands and Islands should seek assistance to identify export markets for their goods and services which could help them through the current trading difficulties.

This was the message from Lena Wilson, chief executive of Scottish Development International (SDI) and Chief Operating Officer at Scottish Enterprise, during a three-day series of meetings with Highlands and Island Enterprise (HIE) this week.

HIE works closely with SDI, which has 230 people in 23 offices in Scotland and across the globe, devoted to promoting international trade opportunities for Scottish businesses and encouraging overseas investors to set up operations here.

As well as fully exploring the barriers and opportunities businesses in the region face in looking to identify and expand their export markets, Ms Wilson also discussed the region's potential attractiveness for inward investors. During her visit she visited a number of businesses including Wavegen; Lifescan; Dan Medical; Black Isle Bronze and Castle Stuart Golf Course.

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Following her experiences Ms Wilson said she was impressed with the account management support that businesses are getting through HIE.

"All of the businesses we visited are spending a lot of time outside Scotland - they're aren't at all shy about doing that, and focusing on specific 'winnable' markets.

"I am particularly impressed by the progress on clustering - such as the private/public sector partnership around health science in Inverness and by the work I know is going on in other areas to create these very productive sector specific clusters of academic excellence, research and commercial development."

Following Ms Wilson's visit, Alex Paterson, HIE's director of regional competitiveness, said: "HIE's support to businesses benefits enormously from our shared expertise with SDI. It enables us to provide information on overseas opportunities, valuable contacts and in-market presence across the globe.

"Working together with the SDI also enables us to highlight international opportunities. A good example of this is the work we are currently doing to help companies maximise opportunities from the new Inverness/Dusseldorf flights coming on stream this summer."

Rob Clarke, HIE's head of International Development concluded: "Now is the right time for ambitious companies to be looking at overseas opportunities and we would encourage them to come and talk to us about how we, together with SDI, could share the task of exploring their export potential."

(GK/JM)