The message has been received loud and clear: UK SMEs want to export more and expand their businesses with sales to millions of customers globally. They are ready and willing to sell and ship to an increasingly wide range of countries, but they would just like a little help. 

They want the UK government to offer more country specific exporting information that has an explicit focus on SMEs, with a multi-thousand pound focus, rather than revenues that are counted in the millions. It's also obvious that service providers in the international shipping, logistics and returns sector could be doing more to help smaller enterprises concentration on what they do best: create fabulous British products - food and drink, home and garden, fashion and health and wellbeing, in particular - and keep their customers satisfied. 

With the aim of better understanding how export challenges are impacting the SME community, alongside Enterprise Nation, we carried out industry research with nearly 1,000 SMEs from across the UK and here's what we found.

This joint report delivered by GS1 UK and Enterprise Nation explores the current exporting environment for UK SMEs within the current context of an ongoing global pandemic, considering the impacts of Brexit and the EU free trade agreement and subsequent government trade negotiations with global nations. Download below to review the full insights and our recommendations.