A DORSET drinks brand inspired by the flavours of Latin America is exporting – to Brazil.

Yuyo, which makes a range of drink infusions, was founded in 2016 by Rosie Marteau and Charles Grummit.

They had travelled to Latin America and discovered yerba mate, a ‘super herb’ used in many traditional drinks there. The company now supplies its drinks through retailers like Ocado, Whole Foods and Revital, as well as its own website.

Exports to markets such as the US, Sweden and France already make up around 40 per cent of the company’s £100,000 annual turnover. The Shaftesbury-based business intends to export to Brazil in the next three months and target Australia in 2019.

It received support from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for International Trade (DIT), which helped identify new markets and register its intellectual property abroad.

Defra and DIT are running a Food is Great campaign to help businesses sell food and drink abroad.

Rosie Marteau said: “Exporting has always been fundamental to our business plans as we knew our products could have a global appeal.

“We’re finding international buyers are increasingly associating UK goods with high quality and on-trend packaging, and we’re looking to tap into this even more by reaching out to new markets including Brazil.

“Brazil is the home of yerba mate itself, but it looks to Europe for innovative brands like ours.

“Of course, exporting is not without its challenges. One of the main factors we had to consider was regulation around ingredients and labelling. It’s very expensive to redesign packaging for a global market.

“We found a way around this at first by putting ingredients stickers over our current packaging so that it complied with international guidelines. This also gave us the flexibility to test our products in different markets without having to spend too much money. Once we’d proven our ability to trade internationally, we created packs with seven different world languages on the back.”

She said support from DIT in the south west had been “vital” since the business launched two years ago. The department hosts ‘meet the buyer’ events for networking with potential clients and distributors.

“The best advice I could give to firms looking to export would be to see it as an extension of their current operations,” she added.

“The hard part of launching a product has already been done, so there’s no reason not to expand your prospects to include overseas buyers too. If we can do it, so can others.”

Paul Shand, DIT’s head of south west, said: “Yuyo is a great example of a local business that’s harnessing the wide range of benefits exporting can bring. It’s encouraging to see such a young company target new markets like Australia as well as continuing to make inroads into its established markets, like the US and Europe.

“We know that firms that trade internationally are more successful, profitable and resilient than their non-exporting counterparts.”