ICL talks up business portal

NEWS ICL is predicting that TradeUK - the UK export Web site ICL developed for the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) - will become UK's premier business portal. Launched two weeks ago, TradeUK is being marketed as the first port of call for international companies seeking British products. With DTI funding, TradeUK can offer to put an electronic version of any UK company's product catalogue up on the Web for a charge of £200 per annum. Tom Connelly, ICL's business development director, predicted that the site stands to generate £100m worth of business over the next year. He based the figure on the number of email responses generated by the Web site. Aside from the branding exposure it gives ICL, Connelly admitted that a motivation for running the site is the potential to sell more advanced ecommerce software products to those companies on TradeUK who want to take their strategy a step beyond their electronic catalogue.