MILLIONS of pounds of extra business is expected to be generated in Yorkshire by a new website.

The website, www.exchange-mr.org, has been pioneered by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency. It offers companies a way of trading their under-utilised assets with other firms.

Scarborough-based Erskine Systems, which manufactures battery-based AC and DC power systems, is among the first companies to benefit from the project.

It had bought an Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) test chamber because it was unable to find a regular and reasonably-priced hire facility for testing new products.

But when it was only able to utilise the device to 25 per cent of its capacity it promoted the EMC on the Exchange and a Yorkshire firm took up the slack.

Pat Moore, managing director of Erskine Systems, said: "Having experienced difficulties finding a reasonably- priced hire facility

ourselves, we realised that other companies must also be struggling to realise their EMC testing needs.

"The only problem we then had was in making other companies aware that we had facilities available for hire. The Manufacturing Resource Exchange scheme has provided us with that necessary link to other manufacturers."

The scheme has been successfully piloted among 100 companies within Yorkshire Forward's advanced engineering and metals clusters and will now be rolled out to other industries.

Updated: 11:03 Monday, December 08, 2003