Allan Parker is international sales manager at Vapormatt, a company based in Taunton that specialises in wet blasting machines that are used to clean turbine blades on aircraft engines.

With 60 per cent of its sales coming from outside the UK, the company is clearly exposed to the global economic downturn. Yet Mr Parker, recently back from a trip to the US Midwest, says while Vapormatt has seen a decline in business, "it is not a devastating decline".