On the 9th April the Prof. Alan Banks, Chair of Composites UK, its Vice-Chair, Luke Vardy, Neil Anderton from member company Slack & Parr and the Chair of the Composites Leadership Forum, Rob Blackburn, were among the invitees to a Make UK roundtable in Westminster to discuss issues with export controls with the Department for Business and Trade Export Controls Joint Unit (ECJU) team.

As previously reported, UK export controls have been a source of frustration for many Composites UK members and the Association is taking strides to overcome these with ECJU. Jo Thompson (Deputy Director of ECJU) gave an overview of the differences between the UK trade policy and that of the EU and our allies, which gives the UK tighter controls based on military end-use. Whilst done for the right reasons, it was pointed out this policy can cause issues downstream, based around the business readiness perceptions of UK companies, in that export delays damage our international reputation as being ‘open for business’: