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Posted: Wed 29th Jul 2026
11 min read
Exporting is one of the biggest growth levers a small business has, and the opportunity is real:
British products and services are in demand all over the world, and businesses that crack overseas markets often say it's the best decision they've made.
The question is why more of them aren't getting there. Right now, thousands of UK firms are finding the door harder to open than it should be, and that means the UK economy is leaving billions on the table.
The numbers tell their own story: Between 2020 and 2023, the number of UK SME goods exporters fell by 19%, a loss of more than 23,000 companies. Over the same period, exporter numbers across the OECD grew by 12%.
This isn't a global slowdown. It's a UK-specific problem.
The proportion of businesses reporting increased export orders fell to just 16% in Q2 2026, down from 25% in Q1, according to British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) research covering over 2,400 exporters.
Services exporters are being hit hardest, with only 14% reporting increased orders against 21% for manufacturers.
Nowhere is the pressure more visible than in our closest market. More than a third of UK small firms currently exporting to the EU say they're planning to scale back or stop altogether.
We asked the Enterprise Nation community what's really behind this. Here's what the national data says, what our members told us, and what's at stake if we don't fix it.
This isn't just a small business problem; it's a national growth problem. Exporting already contributes around 30% of UK GDP.
International trade is one of the clearest growth levers available to SMEs specifically: 82% of UK businesses that trade overseas expect to grow over the next two years, and 62% say exporting has directly improved their competitiveness.
Independent modelling from the Social Market Foundation put a number on what's being missed. If policy support helped just 70,000 more SMEs start exporting, UK turnover would rise by £12.4 billion, adding £9.3 billion to the wider economy and more than 152,000 jobs.
Ex Business Secretary Peter Kyle made the growth case at the UK-China export event on 1 July 2026, pointing to a single trade visit that unlocked £2.2 billion in new export deals and a further £2.3 billion in market access wins over the next five years.
Meanwhile, BCC director general, Shevaun Haviland, struck a more cautious note in March 2026, pointing out that signing trade deals was only half the job, as SMEs were struggling to take advantage of the agreements the government had negotiated on their behalf.
For the businesses that do export successfully, the upside goes well beyond the top line:
Resilience: A business selling into three markets isn't as exposed when one goes quiet.
Competitiveness and innovation: Exporters are consistently more productive than non-exporters. Competing internationally forces a level of product, pricing and service discipline that sharpens the whole business, not just the export arm.
Longer product lifecycles: A product nearing the end of its life in the UK market can find years of extra runway overseas.
Access to talent and ideas: Working with international clients and partners brings new ways of working home with it.
Valuation and investment appeal: Diversified revenue, including export revenue, is consistently more attractive to investors and lenders assessing risk.
Enterprise Nation member Paul Palmer, who supports companies establishing overseas operations in technology and telecommunications, put it simply:
"Exporting opens doors for businesses that plan for it properly."
Ask any UK business what the biggest barrier to trade is, and the answer is consistent. Customs procedures and documentation top the list, cited by 45% of companies, followed by export documentation at 39%, regulations and standards at 35%, and tariffs at 33%.
Among businesses actively trading goods with the EU, 85% say they're facing issues, with customs documentation the single biggest problem at 64%.
For businesses that have stopped exporting in the last five years, the causes were paperwork and time (56%), cost (49%) and supply chain issues (29%).
The scale problem is real, too: 45% of SMEs trading internationally say the value of the goods they trade is under £2,000, and two in five trade at least once a week.
A large business can absorb the fixed cost of a customs declaration across a big shipment; a small business repeating that admin every week on a £500 order faces a completely different equation.
This lines up with what our community told us: 42% said paperwork and customs admin, by far the single biggest answer. A further quarter said their barrier isn't cost or paperwork at all, it's simply not knowing where to start or who to trust for advice.
Enterprise Nation member, Ethar Alali, flagged that Brexit caused this, no question. He points to GPSR, VAT pre-payment and other non-tariff barriers as the real drivers of cost and paperwork now that the UK sits outside the EU bloc.
He pushed back on the idea that the EU is uniquely punishing Britain, arguing this is simply how trade works under World Trade Organisation and bilateral rules once you're outside a trading bloc, and that businesses got complacent during 47 years of frictionless EU membership.
He was also sharply critical of government export support, arguing that DBT (now DBIST) has never been geared towards SMEs, and that UKEF, a key export financing lever, remains inaccessible to businesses turning over less than £500,000 a year, despite years of promises that SME-focused support is "coming."
His conclusion:
"SMEs have largely had no choice but to cut exports out."
More than a third of businesses trading with the EU say compliance costs now run above £5,000 a year, and it's rising.
39% of exporting businesses with 10 or more employees said their exporting costs had increased in March 2026 compared with a year earlier, the highest proportion since September 2023.
Only 8% of our community named compliance cost specifically as their top barrier, well below paperwork, but the two are clearly bound up together.
Member Clive Bonny flagged IP protection, a cost businesses often underestimate until it bites, as worth planning for early, pointing members to further detail.
Not every export challenge is about lorries and customs forms.
Services now account for 58.7% of all UK exports, up from 47.2% a decade ago, and grew by 7.7% in 2025. But service business faces different barriers: VAT treatment for overseas clients, cross-border contract terms, IP protection, and building trust with a client you may never meet.
Despite services making up the majority of UK exports, only 9% of UK SME employers exported services in 2024. Much of the guidance available is written for goods exporters, covering commodity codes and shipping options that simply don't apply.
Not every member's answer fits neatly into a barrier at all.
Jarmila Yu told us exporting simply isn't relevant to her business right now, which is focused on supporting UK-based clients with growth, marketing strategy and project implementation, a reminder that "something else" sometimes just means a deliberate, considered choice rather than a blocker.
For businesses whose natural first export market is the EU, the picture has got harder every year since Brexit.
Goods exports to the EU have fallen by roughly 15% since 2021, and imports from the UK into the EU are down 22% over the same period.
Bridge Cheese, a British cheesemaker, abandoned exports to Europe entirely after the 2021 rules took effect, citing paperwork, border delays and veterinary inspections, and has since redirected its focus to Asian markets.
Mads Jorgsen named Brexit directly as his “something else,” arguing that Great Britain, unlike Northern Ireland, which still trades inside the EU single market, needs closer trading harmony with the EU, particularly given global instability spanning tariff shifts, the war in Ukraine and tensions with China.
When businesses are asked what would encourage them to export more, the answers are consistent: improved access to the EU market, simpler regulations, less bureaucracy, and better export support.
Non-exporters are notably pessimistic: 91% of businesses that don't currently export say they don't expect to start in the next 12 months.
The data gives us the headline picture, and it's an expensive one: £9.3 billion and 150,000 jobs left on the table by a system making exporting harder rather than easier.
What we don't have enough of is the specific, lived version, the exact moment the paperwork became not worth it, the client relationship that fell through because of payment friction, the market you looked at and quietly decided wasn't worth the hasslestopped being worth it.
Share your thoughts with me directly, as we sit on the Board of Trade and would like to share Enterprise Nation members’ thoughts on this topic.
