Our number one stumbling block is credit insurance:
 
In order to keep our cash flowing we use a system common to many SME's of invoice discounting; each invoice or sale we make, the bank gives us the full amount in cash, on the nail. They then wait the 30 or 60 days until our customer pays up. Obviously the banks make a charge for the service, but it means we always have cash to pay our people, and suppliers on time.
 
When goods are exported the bank requires that the debt is insured, no insurance no invoice discount. This is called credit insurance, and whilst there are 100's of brokers there are only four companies, and the terms of the deal are that if one turns you down, you must tell the others, so there's no gain in shopping around. More than 50% of our goods are exported.
 
The problem is that, as with the banks the credit people now look at everyone as a bad risk, so their response is always no, usually without reason. They have lots of guys in little offices around the world looking at financial reports, not the real deal, just numbers.
 
We have a contract to make six parts for a product being built in Romania by a Canadian multi-national, the contract is worth more than 2 million GBP to us. But the credit insurance guys don't like Romania, so no insurance. We're currently negotiating to deal through another of their forty odd plants, but it leaves a bad taste with the customer, plus of course they have no such issues with the Chinese. There's also the knock on effect, our material supplier had his request turned down to insure Clamason because we'd been turned down ourselves, so it becomes a house of cards.
 
We were also turned down for our insulin pen which we supply to Finland, and were forced to ask the end customer to guarantee the debt, this again does not help relations. These people won't consider the UK for work when we give them problems.
 
If the Government were prepared to offer guarantees the work will flood in.