MANY worthy exports have been shipped around the world from Port Glasgow, and the latest to do so are made by the skilful and imaginative team at ScotCrest.

Based at Inverclyde Community Development Trust premises, they are producing a wide variety of highly attractive wooden clan plaques and many other items that go out every day to eager customers from the United States to New Zealand.

They have also tapped into massive markets by securing licensing deals with Rangers and Celtic to make personalised shields using the official club tartans and crests, and working with the National Trust to manufacture Bannockburn celebration whisky boxes and other products.

And, on a more sombre note, they even created two bespoke coat of arms plaques for the funeral two years ago of Bee Gee Robin Gibb.

All of this, of course, doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye. Inverclyde-based managing director Neill Hunter and his wife, Pauline, must have been bleary-eyed, in fact, when they were travelling around 180 miles a day to run the business in Blairgowrie, Perthshire.

Transferring to the Port this month was a sound decision made all the easier by forging a mutually beneficial partnership with the trust, who are no slouches themselves at producing goods for the tourist market and were visited recently by Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael.

ScotCrest are an outstanding Inverclyde success story, harnessing the power of the internet to shine the light of Port enterprise around the globe.