North Launches £8 Million Business Program

The four year initiative is the new phase of InterTradeIreland's £8million Acumen Programme which is jointly funded by Invest NI and Enterprise Ireland and targeted at SMEs in the North and the the Republic of Ireland.

Over the past five years Acumen has supported 132 locally owned Northern companies and 300 companies in total across the North and the Republic of Ireland, creating almost 400 new jobs and new cross-border sales of £28 million.

Mrs Foster made the announcement during a visit to The Bite Group in Enniskillen. The Bite Group supplies sandwiches and snacks to outlets across the North and the Republic of Ireland, and has been supported by both InterTradeIreland's Acumen and FUSION programmes.

The minister said: "Competitiveness and innovation are now the springboard for enterprise development in the modern knowledge economy and such programmes as Acumen are designed to deliver on these.

"InterTradeIreland can assist enterprises in Northern Ireland to grow their business and enhance their competitiveness in seeking out wider export opportunities in an increasingly fast-paced and challenging global marketplace."

Michael Keogh, founder and Managing Director of The Bite Group said: "There is no doubt that InterTradeIreland's sales and marketing programmes have helped The Bite Group go from strength to strength - we started out 10 years ago with six employees - we now have 126 staff working from a new, £3m factory supplying customers like Starbucks, Dunnes Stores and Musgrave.

"The FUSION programme provided us with a graduate whose technical skills brought us the accreditation we needed to woo the big players in the retail trade, while Acumen provided us with the support to take on a sales person who helped boost our exports to the Republic from 4% to 62% inside five years.

InterTradeIreland Chief Executive Liam Nellis said: "In 2007 more than 450 firms participated in the organisation's business networks and trade and business development programmes, generating a total trade value of £10.5m. This represented a total business development value of £42.9m - an increase of £12.1m on the previous year.

"For many of these businesses, participation in our cross-border programmes represented their introduction to formal innovation activity with third level institutes and exporting from their home jurisdiction," he said.