Invertek Drives is fast becoming one of Wales’ main exporters, its products are currently sold in to 80 countries through a network of international sales partners and the independently owned company is targeting significant global expansion over the next five years.

Operations Director, Charles Haspel, was invited to take part in this week’s BBC Radio Wales Wales@Work programme to discuss how Welsh businesses can export to Mexico, Brazil and the Middle East. The episode was planned following comments made by Graham Morgan, director of the South Wales Chamber of Commerce, calling on businesses to create more opportunities to tap into emerging markets.

Invertek sells its Optidrive variable speed drives into all of these territories so Charles was ideally placed to discuss this topic with presenter Tim Rogers during the live studio debate.

Charles explained why exporting is part of Invertek’s mind-set, “As a company we know we have to look beyond the UK – export is what we have to do. A lot of the world’s manufacturing base is now outside of the UK and our products are used in automation applications worldwide.”

In answer to Tim Rogers’ question about how Invertek can compete with products from the Far East that offer the same service, but may be manufactured more cheaply, Charles replied, “It comes down to the quality of the product and the significant amounts of innovation which take place in the UK. Adding enough value to both the products and services we offer makes our proposition attractive to overseas companies.”

You can listen to the full episode of Wales@Work which was first broadcast on 10th October 2013 by following this link and forwarding to 13:40 into the programme.

Details of previous BBC interviews with Invertek can be found in the following news items – Wales@Work ‘Business of the Week’ and Invertek’s success helps UK avoid triple-dip recession.