29 Mar 2023
By Stuart Patrick, Chief Executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
The return to Glasgow Airport of the world’s largest commercial aircraft on the Emirates service to Dubai is a positive milestone in the Airport’s post-Covid recovery. The extra capacity on the A380 takes the daily maximum number of passengers up from just over 350 to 517 and it’s not just first and business classes that see an improved service. Even an economy passenger gets a bigger seat.
Just as important, though, for the Scottish economy were the products in the hold. On its first flight out on Sunday, fresh seafood was heading to Beijing and premium whisky to Taipei. The importance of the Dubai service is of course its role as the link to the world’s largest international hub airport, offering access to markets all across the world. Richard Dewsbury, Emirates Divisional Vice President in the UK welcomed passengers on to the aircraft noting its role in ‘connecting customers to more than 140 destinations via Dubai.’
Those destinations are just as relevant for the goods in the hold as they are for passengers and Emirates listed the most popular Scotch whisky destinations from Glasgow as South Africa, Sydney, Korea and Singapore.
I make a particular point of celebrating the relaunch of the A380 service as I have just returned from a journey through Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia exploring the options for helping Chamber members increase trade in one of the fastest expanding regions on the planet. According to the Asian Development Bank, economic growth in SE Asia was 5.5% last year and its growth rate this year will easily beat forecasts for global average growth. Taking the 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations together would make SE Asia the fifth-largest economy in the world after the US, China, Japan and Germany.
It is also an important market for Scotch whisky. The figures released by the Scotch Whisky Association in February showed Singapore as the third largest export market by value in 2022 after the USA and France. Whisky worth £316m landed in Singapore, up by 50% on 2021 and worth more than either India (£282m) or China (£ 233m). Much of the product reaching Singapore will have been distributed throughout SE Asia as British companies will often use Singapore as the easiest ASEAN country in which to develop a base for serving the wider region.
Many of the other SE Asian countries are benefiting from corporate strategies reassessing their global supply chain risks and choosing to diversify their manufacturing activity beyond China. Vietnam and Indonesia look set to be big winners. I visited one property development project in West Java just outside Jakarta which already has over 2,000 companies in what is essentially the development of a new city with over one million inhabitants.
I was initially concerned to read in the Scottish Government’s trade strategy that SE Asian countries are currently relatively lowly ranked priorities. None feature in the tier one priority markets. Singapore and Indonesia do make it into the second tier as the 21st and 26th target markets respectively. I was pleased, though, to be following in the footsteps of Trade Minister Ivan McKee who had been visiting Singapore and Indonesia exploring opportunities in space, biotechnology, food and drink and the green energy transition.
Our job as a Chamber of Commerce is not to duplicate the work of government agencies like the Department of Business and Trade or Scottish Development International. It is to exploit the business-to-business networks nurtured by our own colleagues in the British Chambers of Commerce overseas membership. The BCC in Thailand, in Singapore and in Indonesia all have members with decades of experience in those markets and with extensive and influential networks of business contacts.
Scotland’s top priority export markets may still be in the USA and Europe but we must also be keen to engage with some of the world’s fastest developing regions. For Glasgow Chamber that certainly includes South East Asia. We hope to be using the Emirates A380 service much more regularly in the months and years ahead.
This article was first published in The Herald on Wednesday 29 March 2023
