Rotherham businesses told to “think global”

ROTHERHAM businesses have been challenged to set their sights on five foreign lands to help boost their prospects.

Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce, along with other UK Chambers, has been working with UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) which offers government backing to businesses wanting to trade overseas.

Each Chamber has been given five countries to work with and the Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce has been concentrating on South Africa, China and Romania so far, with Brazil and a Middle Eastern country under the spotlight in the near future.

The Chamber’s chief executive, Andrew Denniff, said he feared that the growing wave of Euroscepticism could create the “disastrous” scenario of the UK leaving the European Union.

Mr Denniff said he believed that jobs would go as UK businesses lost vital trading links with the continent.

He was also concerned it would send the wrong message to other countries round the world.

Mr Denniff said: “If the UK came out of the EU and we thought we would not have the same access to European markets that we had. Why would we? To believe that is just arrogance.”

The Chamber chief said he believed that common sense would prevail a view he said was shared by most business people.