As the Journal reveals the winners of its competition to win a place on a trade trip to Dubai, John Hill looks at other North East businesses that are looking East, or are already established in the UAE.

BACK in March, Corbridge-born Alan Reed arrived in Dubai - like many Brits before him - looking to build up business in the metropolis.

It wasn’t his first visit. He’d been there in January, for one, and had been part of an exhibition in the city in November. But Alan wasn’t looking for a job in construction or an outlet for manufacturing. He was there to paint.

“I’m basically going over there to pick up commissions”, he says. “I do paintings and landscapes and cityscapes in places like the North East, Italy and Scotland.

“I started doing some work in Oman about four years ago, and because of that I was travelling out to the Gulf. At the moment, about 70% of my work based around the North East and 5-10% is in other parts of the UK. It’s mainly individual buyers and companies looking for commissions.”

While he can’t say as yet how successful this move will be, he’s not alone in seeking out work in this part of the Middle East. According to UKTI, the United Arab Emirates is the UK’s largest export market in the Middle East and North Africa. It sits at 16th in the table of export markets for the UK, with about £3.9bn in goods and services heading in that direction.

While the region didn’t escape the worldwide ravages of the recession, its status as a rapidly growing economy and the presence of tax-free zones makes it an attractive proposition to companies who’ve done sufficient research.

UKTI international trade adviser Geoff Charlesworth, who used to live in the region and has led several trade trips there, says there are opportunities “in basically every sector, including financial services and construction, all the way to education, advertising and promotion”.

He says: “There’s been something like 17% growth in non-oil revenues in this year already. When I was there last month, all the construction had started up again, admittedly partly because it was too expensive to mothball. But the government is paying its bills again, and it’s a popular market for exports because it’s basically a trading post that imports everything except oil and gas.”

Alan Reed has completed commissions for clients such as Coutts Bank, Rolls Royce, Northern Rock and royalty, but is interested to see if his “representational but not photographic style” is attractive to the Middle Eastern buyer.

He says: “I haven’t really got any pre-conceived ideas. It’s very much a new marketplace. Dubai has been affected by the recession just like everyone else, and you can see evidence of that in the building projects. I’ve picked up one or two pieces but I’m not closing my eyes to anything.

“What I’ve noticed is that Arabic art does tend to be favoured above Western art. There’s more symbolism and they tend not to favour representations of people as much. There’s also a strong preference for calligraphy.

“The things I’ve enjoyed doing the most are some of the old villages in mountainous areas. You’ve got small villages perched on the side of mountains with terraces for pomegranates.”