Sheffield-based Diamond Dispersions, a manufacture of water-based pigmented dispersions and dispersed dyes for inkjet inks, has won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade. The company, which has seen a 40% year-on-year growth, exports 85% of everything it produces, China being its biggest market.
Director Peter Callahan said: “We’re growing by 40% year-on-year and, as the worldwide inkjet market continues to expand, we are constantly developing new products and exploring new global markets. Our export success can be attributed to a number of factors. When we launched, we were competing against multi-national companies with long established reputations in the global ink and printing industry. From day one, we set out to get to know our customers personally because we firmly believe that ‘people buy people’. We combined this approach with the provision of full technical information on all of our products which enabled clients to save valuable laboratory time, and we started to win business.
“We have since developed a network of distributors in our key geographic markets: China, Taiwan, South Korea, India, USA, Germany and Poland. Supporting our distributors and spending time with each of our clients remain key so we regularly attend international trade shows with them and carry out frequent in-country sales and technical visits - we actually spend a third of the year travelling.
“To further develop these markets, we are appointing in-country technical managers. Our first technical manager has recently been appointed for China where, working with the distributor, he will support both the Chinese and South Korean markets.”