The declining value of the dollar is having at least one positive effect.
New Hampshire companies are exporting more products than ever before.
The state’s exports have climbed to 2.1 billion dollars during the first 7 months of 2007.
That’s 2 percent higher than during the same period last year.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman has more.
The head of New Hampshire’s export office says high tech products are the state’s leading exports.
Dawn Wivell says that category includes computer and telecommunication equipment, and other manufacturing machinery.
And Wivell says medical products are also doing well.
..that’s a sector that’s really growing. And it’s a very hot market overseas.
Wivell says another company that’s had increasing overseas sales is GT Solar in Merrimack.
So the solar panel market is really growing and they’re taking a really significant market share.
So that’s thrown that category into being number two and its never been number two.
The state’s export office reports New Hampshire companies are selling products to many parts of the world.
That includes Canada, our largest trading partner and China, the state’s next largest customer.
But half of the state’s top ten export destinations are in Europe.
Finance professor Fred Kaen of the University of New Hampshire says he thinks overseas sales are rising because the value of U.S. currency has been sliding down.
A lot of it has to do with the weakness of the dollar on the foreign exchange markets Europe, where the euro is extremely strong and also to some of the asian countries, southeast asian countries to some extent, but its got to be primarily Europe where the dollar has been the weakest.
A weak dollar makes products manufactured in the U.S. cheaper for foreigners to buy.
And companies of all sizes are getting in on the action in New Hampshire.
Rokon International in Rochester is a small company that manufactures specialized motorcycles for backcountry riding.
Mining companies and police forces use the motorcycles in rocky terrain, such as mountain passes and national border areas.
Rokon president Tom Blais says his company has always focused on making foreign sales, but the climate now has become very favorable.
… the European market has really picked up. I mean the euro is just annihilating the dollar and we’re just delivering huge sales increases to places like Sweden and England where historically we’ve had a presence but it’s not nearly been as great as it’s been now.
New Hampshire dairy products are also selling well in foreign countries.
As of March, the industry had sold 323 thousand dollars worth of products, versus a meager 73 thousand the year before.
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Taylor, a dairy farmer himself, says the exports are not what you’d expect.
The export over the last few, well the last many years, at least the last 3 decades has been genetics, in other words semen from top quality bulls and embryos from in vitro sort of fertilization of cow eggs with top quality bulls.
Other dairy exports include lactose and casein, two milk byproducts that are used in other foods and some medical products.
State export officials say they expect New Hampshire companies to keep doing well in foreign sales.
They say the key remains the relative weakness of the dollar, which has declined 33 percent against the euro during the last six years.
