Pictured above: (l-r) UK Trade & Investment international trade adviser Mick Page is pictured with Justin Potter, managing director of Potter's Poultry, and export manager Mike Button

A Rugby manufacturing company has won substantial new business to export poultry nesting equipment to Australia - with help from UK Trade & Investment.

Potter's Poultry is a family-owned firm, now in its third generation, which was established nearly 50 years ago.

The company manufactures specialist nesting houses and systems for free range and breeding birds.

It has just signed an agreement with an Australian distributor that is expected to lead to business worth up to £500,000 over the next 12 months, following help through UK Trade & Investment's Export Marketing Research Scheme (EMRS).

Export sales manager Mike Button said: "As Australia's poultry industry has many similarities to the UK's, we believed there was a market for our products but needed to research this more closely.

"Financial support through EMRS enabled me to spend ten days travelling from Perth to Brisbane last November meeting key industry players, so that we could assess routes to market and see the potential for growth.

"This enabled us to establish that the best route was through a distributor and in addition, gave us a high profile in the market, which was a huge help, generating a great deal of interest in our products. 

"We followed this up in May at an industry conference in Brisbane, where people were coming to see us, although nobody had heard of us six months previously, and we have just finalised an agreement with an Australian distributor. 

"It's very early days but we expect this to be worth up to £500,000 over the next 12 months, with excellent potential for the longer term."

Mike added: "We have been working with UK Trade & Investment for about two years and the support from our international trade adviser, Mick Page, has been excellent.

"He advised us on how to get started and how to avoid potential pitfalls, which was really helpful."

Potter's Poultry has 70 employees and an annual turnover of approximately £5.5m. It is also exporting to the USA, mainland Europe and the Middle East.

International trade adviser Mick Page, based at Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce, said: "This is a serious engineering company, which is continuously improving its equipment to meet the industry's needs.  It's great to be working with such an innovative family firm."

For more information about how UK Trade & Investment can help your business expand into new markets abroad, contact the international trade team at Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry on 02476 654321.