I have banged on before about us not exporting enough food and drink as a nation. Our balance of trade - a deficit of £20bn a year in food and drink - is staggering. Don’t get me on my soapbox again about all the bottled water we bring over from France or Cadbury chocolate we import from Poland.

There’s lots more work to be done in export - not least developing a much more international perspective, but there’s also another obvious opportunity. Exporting ourselves: selling our expertise abroad and building on something us Brits do rather well - selling our services.

This week I went to Chicago and visited an ice cream plant and a cottage cheese plant - and frankly I was underwhelmed. There were huge gaps in what we would call good manufacturing practice and technically they were very weak.

I took with me an ex-colleague from my St Ivel days - someone with more expertise in chilled product development and process engineering than anyone else I know. It turns out he’s doing a rather good job of exporting himself. In the past six months, he’s been involved in projects in the US, Europe and the Middle East sharing his expertise. His one weakness, I felt, was that he didn’t value his services enough and was undercharging his clients for top-quality advice. I’ve always had a policy of charging like an angry rhino… especially when you’ve got skills that are in short supply.

Having been around these plants in the US and similar food manufacturing sites in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, it is very clear to me that technical standards and manufacturing practices in UK are way ahead of the game and we lead the world. We owe a debt of gratitude to Marks & Spencer, who I believe transformed British food manufacturing standards through rigorous standards and an obsession with freshness and quality. No wonder M&S is rolling out internationally again - it has a wonderful franchise and, like the BBC, is one of the special things about Britain.

So let’s have a look in the mirror, give ourselves a great big round of applause and start taking seriously the opportunity to export our food expertise. We’ve got bags of it and it’s pretty clear to me that not many other countries can say that.