“The backing from UKEF and Virgin Money has helped us grow and take our beer international,” Wold Top Brewery managing director Kate Balchin said when the Driffield brewer secured export support. On Thursday 9 July 2026, UK Export Finance used stories like Wold Top’s to front a new national push, saying it provided more than £11 billion in loans, guarantees and insurance in 2025/26, supporting up to 85,000 jobs and up to £6.4 billion in UK GDP. (gov.uk) For readers across Yorkshire and the wider North, that is where this story lands. Westminster likes big totals, but the case being made here is that export finance is not just for the household names or the usual postcodes; it is meant to reach family firms, specialist manufacturers and regional employers that often sit outside the capital’s line of sight. (gov.uk)

According to UK Export Finance, it helped British businesses secure contracts in 37 countries over the last year. The department has £130 billion of financing capacity and says its job is to make sure viable exports do not fall over for lack of finance or insurance from the private market, while operating at no net cost to the taxpayer. (gov.uk) The supported deals ran across advanced manufacturing, defence, sustainable energy and critical minerals. That mix matters in Northern England, where any talk of growth only means much if it turns into orders on factory floors, steadier cashflow and jobs that stick around. (gov.uk)

The announcement was not only about last year’s scorecard. Ministers said on 9 July that they would set out plans in Parliament to modernise UKEF’s mandate, with the aim of giving it wider powers to strengthen economic resilience, secure critical supply chains and support long-term growth. Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle said the agency’s recent results showed how backing sectors from breweries to renewables could support jobs across the country. (gov.uk) Tim Reid, UKEF’s chief executive, said the point was to turn overseas demand into “real opportunity for communities across the country”. The Northern question is whether those extra powers make it easier for firms outside London to get decisions quickly, or whether the wording changes faster than the system does. (gov.uk)

At Wold Top Brewery near Driffield, the official example is straightforward enough: a £200,000 trade loan from Virgin Money, backed through UKEF’s General Export Facility, helped the family-run brewer push further into Europe and North America. UK Export Finance said the business exports to Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany, employs more than 20 local people and has used the support to deal with the longer payment terms that often come with selling overseas. (gov.uk) Dulas gives the same argument a different regional accent. The Machynlleth-based renewable energy company, with sites in Mid Wales, Inverness and Bognor Regis, has used successive UKEF-backed finance packages to keep producing solar-powered vaccine fridges for immunisation programmes in more than 80 countries. Ruth Chapman, Dulas’s executive managing director, called the facility “an invaluable tool for our export business”. (gov.uk)

There is a second part to the government’s case, and it is the one smaller firms will watch most closely. UKEF’s impact report says 66 per cent of the 616 firms it directly supported last year were SMEs. It also added White Oak and Nighthawk during the financial year, then Mercore in recent weeks, and in January announced an £11 billion joint lending commitment with the UK’s five leading banks to widen access to finance for smaller exporters. (gov.uk) That will sound less dramatic than a billion-pound defence guarantee, but in towns where owner-managers spend half the week chasing cashflow, it may be the more important line in the announcement. Exporting is often won or lost in the gap between shipment and payment. (gov.uk)

This is not only a small business story. UKEF also pointed to a £1.5 billion Export Development Guarantee for Jaguar Land Rover and support for Thales UK as it supplies defence equipment to Ukraine. Industry bodies including the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade and the British Exporters Association said the figures showed how access to trade finance could help firms create jobs, unlock investment and build resilience in a tougher global market. (gov.uk) Still, readers in the North will judge this less by the ministerial pitch than by what turns up on the ground. If fresh legislation really does make UKEF more useful, the proof will be seen in places like Driffield and far beyond: quicker decisions, broader lending and a better chance for regional firms to win business overseas without having to fight the system at home. (gov.uk)