Written by Kevin Craven, ADS Chief Executive

This Saturday 4 December marks Small Business Saturday, an occasion to celebrate, promote and support small businesses across the UK.

In support of the campaign and our members, it gives us an opportunity to showcase the importance of the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) companies across our sectors who make up more than 90 per cent of our membership.

SMEs in the Defence sector are integral to the wider supply chain and their capabilities present exciting opportunities for Front Line Command. The voices of our Defence SME Committee and representatives working across the Defence Suppliers Forum make important contributions to our work supporting the development of major Ministry of Defence strategies, including the upcoming SME Action Plan, and Land Industrial Strategy.

In Security our SME members offer cutting-edge capabilities, and we are helping them to grow through our programme of Public Security Exhibitions and at next year’s Security & Policing 2022. SMEs have been recognised at S&P through the ADS Security Innovation Award, and you can see winners and commended entrants stretching back more than a decade here.

The UK’s Aerospace SMEs are formidable and generate a turnover of £1bn per year, and it is their innovative work that will help us achieve net zero by 2050. Aerospace SMEs are particularly renowned for their supply chain excellence, as demonstrated by the number of richly deserved SC21 Gold Awards and I greatly enjoyed presenting Northern Irish SME members with their awards last week in Belfast and seeing the deep and mutually respectful relationships the winner had with their prime sponsors. It is a great and productive model

In the Space sector, SMEs will play an essential role in realising the potential the recently published National Space Strategy. ADS provides a range of services to SMEs in the sector, including details of funding programmes, new business development opportunities, discounted rates to exhibit at major trade shows and facilitating dialogue between large companies and the SME community.

You can find out more about our SME members world-leading capabilities and services via our online member directory, where you can search by capability and keywords suitable to your requirements.

Our Supporting SMEs brochure also details all the ways ADS can support SMEs with membership tailored to your needs.

If you feel there is anything ADS could be doing to better to support you and your business, please contact me directly.

In the meantime, I encourage you to support all small, independent and local businesses this weekend in support of the #SmallBizSatUK campaign.