Clean Coal Company uses exporting as a platform for long-term growth
Originally formed in the early 1920s, Greenbank as it is today took shape in the mid-1950s. The company provides highly-specialised products and services to heavy industry, delivering benefits associated with high-quality engineering and preventative maintenance.
A Platform for International Trade Growth
Greenbank Terotech is a world leader in the development, manufacture and installation of innovative clean coal technologies. However, finance director, Martin Killbery says the company's marketing and sales projections strongly indicated the required levels of business growth lay in export sales, "The UK market has accepted our technologies as a cutting edge standard for efficiency savings whilst contributing towards legislative and targeted emission reductions in the area we specialise and operate in. Exporting our products to the world is our natural route to long-term growth."
Access to advice
Five years ago the company was in need of export know-how, "We simply did not have the expertise required to develop export sales on the scale we wanted. We were keen to learn from the best sources how to achieve this route to market quickly and seamlessly."
Greenbank joined the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce in 2001, looking specifically for help establishing a successful export operation.
"It was key to get our people up to speed on areas such as: origin certification, working with letters of credit to guarantee payment, export terminology and documentation, funding and market penetration. It was vital that we built a professional platform to understand and manage effectively the risks and challenges associated with entering overseas markets."
Advice, training and funding support
The Chamber has given Greenbank access to a wide range of help and advice, with members of the management team attending training courses covering every aspect of export sales.
"Our commercial manager attended a four day ITOPS course and gained a qualification in export administration, which is vital to running a professional, credible export operation."
The Chamber also helped Greenbank find funding and understand how best to approach specific overseas markets. "The Chamber helped us to use government Passport to Export Success match funding to translate out literature into local languages and cover the cost of travel and exhibiting overseas. It has also provided a sounding board when it comes to deciding how to approach each market - making us consider whether the best approach is via local agents or joint ventures for instance."
There is no doubt in Martin's mind that the business is now primed for export success. "Our export sales broke the £1m mark last year. The trusted advice we got from the Chamber gave us the knowledge and confidence we needed to make that happen."
