Luxury fashion designers, including Ettinger and Freya Rose, have joined a trade mission to Japan led by the business and trade secretary as the government seeks to boost exports.
The delegation met Japanese fashion buyers and will showcase products including hand-painted scarves and lab-grown jewellery at the British Embassy in Tokyo. It is the first secretary of state-led trade mission for the sector since 2017 and coincides with the G7 trade summit in Osaka this weekend.
Ministers are seeking to increase sales of UK luxury brands to the Japanese market as part of a wider target of hitting £1 trillion of UK exports a year by 2030. Projections from the trade department have previously shown the target, set under the coalition government in 2012, will not be reached until 2035 — 15 years later than its target.
Exports of UK fashion goods to Japan totalled £133 million last year and total exports to the country amounted to £13.9 billion in the year to the end of March, an increase of 9.9 per cent on the previous year, the government said.
Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, will host a committee with Yoko Kamikawa, a foreign minister, to build on the free trade agreement signed between the two countries in 2020. The government says the agreement has benefited British businesses by simplifying rules of origin and low-zero tariffs, removing barriers to trade.
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Badenoch formally signed the treaty in July confirming the UK’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose 11 current members include Japan.
The business delegation also includes the jewellery brand Anabela Chan, Christys’, the hat manufacturer, and Hemingsworth, the swimwear and leisurewear company.
Badenoch is also set to announce what has been billed as the largest government-guaranteed loan for a renewables project. The project involves more than £130 million in UK-made parts by Siemens Gamesa in Hull to build an offshore wind farm in Taiwan.
