9 September 2025
On 9 April, the Railway Industry Association (RIA) in partnership with the RIA Exports Leadership Group (RELG), the RIA SME Leadership Group and attending officials from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), along with UK Export Finance (UKEF) and Innovate UK, held an SME Exports Workshop with over 90+ UK rail-related company representatives registering.
The findings of this interactive session, the company insights and thoughts have helped form a narrative to shape and support UK companies going forward.
The aim is that Government, officials, and those organisations in a position to assist SMEs and UK exporters, consider the responses from UK rail SMEs and where possible, undertake recommendations and measures to improve the available support and services to empower the UK’s exporting railway community further.
Executive Recommendations
This report is a starting point for RIA, industry and stakeholders, to work together to improve rail exports and the support available to UK exporters. In summary, it recommends:
- Better signposting of available exports support and related training;
- Better sharing of overseas market intelligence;
- To be aware of, and to utilise, UKEF [UK Export Finance] services to unlock financial support and access to procurement opportunities;
- Strong relationships to be created between Tier 1 companies and SMEs to support the railway industry’s ability to bring increased export value to the UK economy; and
- RIA, RELG, DBT, UKEF, DfT and Innovate UK to form a working group to provide solutions to the report’s recommendations, where practical.
If you have questions, comments or feedback on this report, please contact RIA Policy Executive Dominic Poole at [email protected].