Are You Eligible?
To be eligible, participating businesses must:
- Be an SME with less than 250 staff.
- Have a minimum annual turnover of £50,000 and not exceeding £40 million per annum (or Euro Equivalent).
- Be an indigenous business registered in Ireland or Northern Ireland.
- Be active in the manufacturing or tradable services sectors. By tradable services, InterTradeIreland requires the business service to be delivered in the cross-border market, and not just to attract customers from the cross-border market to their service business in the home market (see list below of ineligible sectors).
- Have a minimum 12 months trading history.
- Have more than 75% of sales in their home market.
- Have cross-border sales in the opposite jurisdiction of less than 7% of company turnover.
- Be able to complete the First-Time Exporters Accelerator project within a maximum 6 months of approval.
Please note that securing a place on the First-Time Exporters Accelerator programme will be a competitive process. Consequently, satisfaction of the eligibility criteria for the programme does not guarantee that an application will be successful. Businesses must be able to demonstrate a product or service offering with a high probability of sales success in the cross-border market.