Three-time Queen’s Award winner ICC Solutions has partnered with the Duke of Edinburgh to launch a new exporting initiative, while its boss has also hailed the UK’s decision to leave the EU as a "land of opportunity".

The Warrington-headquartered IT company, which specialises in providing testing tools for chip and pin systems, was incorporated by managing director and chief executive Dave Maisey 20 years ago. It now exports to 63 countries with 90 per cent of its overall revenue currently attributed to international trade.

The business has launched an Exporting Excellence initiative in partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award team, which is intended to ignite a passion for international trade in young people.

Maisey said: "Because I had connections with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award team, I put forward a proposal to them outlining a plan to see if we could encourage young people to learn more about international trade.

"The focal point to this pilot phase would be a competition hosted by ICC Solutions in conjunction with the Duke of Edinburgh and leading up to that competition certain schools would become finalists."

He added: "We now have six finalists for the competition and the schools will prepare a presentation in which they clearly convey that they’ve assessed all of the areas that are important when considering doing international business with a selected country.

"This will hopefully ignite a desire within young people to embrace the opportunities and benefits offered by international trade, helping to ensure Britain thrives as a powerful global trading nation."

The Exporting Excellence initiative includes a cash prize of £2,500 and the final will be held on 25 January 2017 at The Peace Centre in Warrington, Cheshire.

Maisey said ICC Solutions was also gearing up to expand into China.

"We’ve been building our relationships with key organisations in China and that will be pivotal to ensuring that we actually fully penetrate that market," he said.

On Brexit, he added: "We’re extremely confident about our abilities to move forward and embrace the new opportunities that will undoubtedly arise.

"Things happen, and we need to accept them and we need to embrace the opportunities that lie ahead. I really do believe that there are exciting times ahead and that we should have more flexibility as a nation to implement new trading agreements quicker."

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