The creator of Tyrrells Crisps and Chase Vodka has urged fellow manufacturers to follow his lead and look to exports for growth.
Potato entrepreneur William Chase, whose businesses are based in Hertfordshire, expects the US to become the main market for his pure potato-based Vodka and elderflower liquer this year and is also working hard to push sales in Europe, Brazil, UAE, Australia and Canada. He expects China to over take the US at some point as his biggest export market.
“Although the US is a huge market for Chase Vodka, China could possibly become the largest market of all,” said Chase, “and we are launching in Shanghai next month.”
Chase says exporting manufacturers will become the main source of the country’s growth, post-recession.
“Since the eighties Britain has become more and more dependent on service industries but now, following global economic meltdown, it is our manufacturing industries that will create the jobs to lead us out of recession,” he said.
UK manufacturing export sales balance soared 13 points to +37% according to British Chambers of Commerce’s latest Quarterly Economic Survey (QES) and the export orders balance surged by 21 points to +39%. Chase pointed to this, plus his own success overseas and that of Rolls-Royce, as evidence of the opportunities in exports available to British companies.
“The Government and ‘expert’ analysts have been informing us for the last 20 years that British manufacturing is dead and that our small island should rely on the city slickers, traders, bankers and service suppliers. Rolls-Royce and Chase Distillery are proving just how wrong this was,” he says.
Chase Vodka was recently voted the Best Vodka in the World and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
