There’s one man who has total faith in the north west economy. Martin Douglas, the newly- appointed president of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, feels the future is looking bright.

"There are, of course, challenges that all business will face," he said. "But the good news is that we are out of recession and we have come out of it with unemployment falling in Greater Manchester.

"The recession hasn’t caused as many job losses as we had expected, which indicates that we have a reasonably balanced economy, a fairly resilient economy here."

Martin, general manager for UK and Ireland at Cargill, an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services, based at its Trafford Park plant, feels there is hope for recovery, especially in the export trade.

He said: "As a region we should be interacting with the global market. We have done a fantastic job in Greater Manchester, partly hand-in-hand with the public sector, in the last 25 years, in widening the base of the Greater Manchester economy and making the region a good place to do business.

"But what we have to acknowledge is that some of that growth has come from displacing economic activities in other areas and if we’re to really thrive as a region you have to create demand from international markets as well as local markets.

"And, whilst we have got some great examples of businesses which trade internationally, we need more of them and we need to find the goods and services to do this.

"Our construction industry in the UK is currently struggling following recession, yet there are many great examples of engineers and consulting companies building schools and hospitals in other parts of the world using British talents from British companies. And that’s just an example of where we can grow our non-product exports by selling our services abroad.

"When demand increases on a global basis, it’s likely to do so more rapidly in countries that have been relatively underdeveloped and that has been evident in the growth of Asian economies including China, Korea and India.

"We, as country, haven’t taken full advantage of that and when I compare ourselves as a manufacturing economy to Germany, something like two-and-a-half times as much of German GDP is produced by exports to China than the UK.

"We need to be a little less introspective as a nation and look to take the opportunities as they arise."

And the Chamber will be at the forefront of this by encouraging links between countries and businesses. Its international trade committee will be building on its links to assist businesses where they might not already have connections, help businesses in understanding the cultures that they will be selling into, and making them more attractive to foreign, particularly Asian, market places.

"The Chamber is a great starting point in simply asking very basic questions like, ‘Where do I go to find out?’ and, in some cases, that might be on your doorstep."

Other future aims for the Chamber include growing its membership from 5,000 to 7,000.

He said: "We are delighted that membership has been stable whilst there have been a number of companies that have gone out of business. We have been able to recruit new members at a time when industry has been in some degree of stress. That’s again partly a testament to the resilience of the Greater Manchester economy and, therefore, we have to believe that when economic circumstances are better we can build on that and can grow from there."

Martin, who was born in Bradford and grew up in the East Riding, has always known the value of work.

The son of an accountant and telephone receptionist, he started working life as a teenager, selling fruit and vegetables part-time, and worked on a pig farm just before starting university at Newcastle where he completed a BSc in agriculture science.

"As the eldest of two bothers and a sister I probably had to work the hardest at the earliest," he said.

"Living and working in a reasonably rural environment is where my interest in agriculture came from.

"In hindsight, if I had realised the diversity and wealth of opportunity that are open to people after education I possibly would taken a different route. From my own experience, I believe in raising awareness among young people of the diverse and exciting careers in commerce and industry and I’m a huge believer in making work placements exciting and fulfilling." After university, Martin worked as a rep, selling animal feed and fertilisers to farmers in north Yorkshire, before taking up his first role as an area manager with Cargill, aged 29.

Cargill is a global company operating in 66 countries with a turnover of £2.6bn last year. It employs 133,000 people, with 300 employees in Trafford Park.

Martin said: "I have been with Cargill for 25 years and have held various positions in the company, living all over the UK before coming to work in Manchester in 2007.

"Cargill was then investing very heavily in its Trafford Park food ingredients business, just around the same time as the recession was beginning to emerge.

"We were very lucky we were mostly involved in the food sector. People’s resilience is significantly higher with consumer spending in food.

"It is a non-discretionary spend so we’ve actually worked through the recession pretty well as the overall demand has continued to be very strong."

Martin, who loves going to the theatre and hill-walking, having completed the 192-mile coast to coast walk very recently, is also involved in many other organisations.

He is a member of the executive committee of the Food And Drink Federation and director of Manchester Solutions to name but two.

With so many hats to wear, how does he fit everything in?

"Part of my job is to have a Cargill footprint in the local business community," he said.

"It means some days are really long, but it’s fun.

"There are certain times in your life where you can devote a lot of time towards your business career and often it’s in your twenties before you have children and it could be in your fifties
when your children have got their own lives to lead, and my time is now."

FACTFILE