$20M scheme for export ideas

Press, 10 April 1987, Page 3

$20M scheme for export ideas

PA Hamilton A new $2O million export encouragement scheme was launched in Hamilton yesterday by the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore. Called the Individual Exporter Programe, the scheme provides for grants of up to $50,000 a year for small and medium-sized companies to explore and develop products and markets. During each of the next two years, $lO million has been allocated to the Market Development Board to distribute. The scheme has been broken down into a series of grants available for export feasibility plans, market research, exploratory visits to new markets, hiring of export managers and consultants on either a full-time or part-time basis, trade fair participa-

tion, promotion and advertising, inward buyer missions, patent and trademark help, and offshore development projects: The scheme also involves the Export Institute’s spending $500,000 during the next two years on export education programmes. The institute’s president, Mr Tony Clark, said the individual exporter programe was designed to expose smaller companies and their products to potential markets and encourage them to “give it a go.”

“We are very pleased with it because small companies thinking of exporting often lack the cash to investigate new markets,” he said. There had already been a lot of company interest in the scheme and applications were flowing in to the institute, he said.