Scottish Development International’s (SDI) international trade and investment activity created or safeguarded more than 7,000 Scottish jobs and helped more than 1,000 high potential Scottish companies target new global markets last year.
In 2011/2012, SDI also worked with 190 companies on significant new international projects with a projected growth of £733million in sales over the next three years – almost double the £405million that was achieved through the same activity last year.
A joint venture between Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Government, SDI works closely with Scottish companies to help them grow their operations in the global market place and to bring inward investment to Scotland.
Other key results included the following.
- More than 1,800 of the 7,000 planned jobs created or safeguarded in 2011/12 were high value jobs
- Almost £22million of Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) support for projects with a planned expenditure of almost £163million was offered to more than 30 inward investors to locate or grow their operations in Scotland
- More than 1380 companies were supported through a range of trade and investment activities, such as workshops, trade missions and in-market support. This included support to1055 Scottish high potential companies
- More than 2200 Scottish company delegates benefited from Smart Exporter events, products and services since it was launched in 2010.
These results complemented Scottish Enterprise's wider efforts to boost Scotland's international trade and investment activity, which also included the following.
- There were more than 17,800 new registrations for TalentScotland in the past year, following the launch of the TalentScotland.com website which aims to attract new highly skilled people to work in Scotland.
- GlobalScot had its most successful year-to-date generating over 450 requests for assistance from Scottish companies to members of the GlobalScot network.
- Fifty GlobalScot events were held in Scotland and overseas, with 430 attendees and 140 one-on-one meetings between companies and GlobalScots. There were 65 new members to the GlobalScot network, bringing the total number of members to 778.
The full press release is available from the Scottish Enterprise Media Centre