The Scottish Government export growth strategy ‘A Trading Nation‘ has the headline goal of increasing the value of international exports from the equivalent of 20% of Scottish GDP to 25% by 2029. However, since the strategy was launched in 2019 there has been considerable disruption to international trade through political changes such as the UK’s exit from the EU, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, uncertainty due to the imposition of tariffs, and geopolitical events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.
The Scottish Government produces ‘Export Statistics Scotland’, which along with Regional Trade Statistics from HMRC allow us to evaluate how Scottish exporters have negotiated these challenges.
This blog is a summary of a more detailed briefing SPICe have produced, and shows 10 key charts which give an overview of recent export performance.
Turning to the headline goal, Chart 1 below shows that in the years to 2023 little progress has been made in terms of increasing the value of international exports compared to GDP, reflecting the challenging international context.
Chart 1: Value of Scotland’s international exports compared to GDP, 2008 to 2023
Chart 2 below lists just some of the external shocks that have impacted the Scottish economy and international trade, from the Covid-19 pandemic, to the end of the transition period and the UK’s exit from the EU, to the more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.
Chart 2: Timeline of recent external shocks
When developing the 2019 Trading Nation strategy, the Scottish Government assessed the greatest opportunities to grow Scotland’s exports. In 2025, reflecting this changed international context, the Scottish Government carried out a re-assessment and made some changes to these priorities. Rather than priority 1 and priority 2 markets, the updated prioritisation now identifies ‘priority markets’ and ‘special interest markets’. Compared to the original trading nation strategy, there are a few changes worth highlighting:
- Previously, there were 15 ‘priority 1’ markets which would receive greater focus and resources to encourage purchases of Scottish exports. Now, there are 20 ‘priority’ markets.
- Turkey and Nigeria, previously categorised as ‘priority 2’ markets, are now no longer considered a priority.
- Saudi Arabia, previously not identified as either a ‘priority 1’ or ‘priority 2’ market, is now considered a priority market.
Chart 3 shows the new priority target markets:
Chart 3: Changes to the prioritisation of destination markets, 2025
Export Statistics Scotland provide the most comprehensive data on Scotland’s exports, covering exports to all destinations including the rest of the UK, and covering all categories of exports (goods, services and others such as agriculture, construction and utilities). The most recent publication provided data from 2008 up to and including 2023. This shows that total exports in 2023 were valued at £93.1 billion. This was a reduction of 3.3% compared to 2022 in cash terms, or 7.0% when adjusting for inflation. Chart 4 shows Scotland’s exports by destination, and by type.
Chart 4: Exports from Scotland by sector and destination, 2023
Exports of services were worth a total of £45.4 billion in 2023, accounting for 49% of all exports. Unlike manufacturing, these are predominately to the rest of the UK which accounted for 66% of service exports in 2023. Service exports to all destinations increased between 2019 and 2023; to the rUK by £2.0 billion (7%); to the EU by £1.2 billion (21.5%) and to the rest of the world by £1.4 billion (18%). Much of this recovery occurred in 2022.
Chart 5: Nominal value of service exports by destination, 2008 to 2023
In 2023, 66.9% of all service exports were accounted for by three industrial sectors: financial and insurance activities (25.1%), wholesale and retail trade (22.6%), and professional, scientific and technical activities (19.3%). These proportions have been broadly stable in recent years but, looking back to 2008, financial and insurance services have declined from over one third of all service exports to around one quarter, while professional, scientific and technical activities have grown from 12.4% in 2008 to nearly a fifth in 2023.
Chart 6: Value of individual service sectors exports in 2023
The total mass of goods exports from Scotland peaked in 2019-20; by 2025-26 the total mass of Scottish exports had reduced by 42.6% compared with this peak. As the chart above shows, the mass of both EU and non-EU exports have fallen, but the fall of non-EU exports has been more significant. These increased rapidly in 2019-20 then fell significantly, and in 2025-26 were 75% below their 2019-20 peak. The mass of EU exports decreased by 26.1% in the same period.
It’s worth noting that the mass of exports increased rapidly in the years leading to 2019-20; between 2016-17 and 2019-20 the total mass of exports increased by 26.6%. As with the decline since 2019-20, this increase was largely driven by non-EU exports which grew by 58.3% between 2016-17 and 2019-20.
The value of Scottish international goods exports peaked in 2022-23 with total exports worth £37.3 billion, an increase of 45% since 2016-17 in nominal terms. However, adjusting for inflation, this was an increase of 23% as shown in Chart 7 below:
Chart 7: Indexed total mass and value of Scotland’s international goods exports, 2016-17 to 2025-26
In 2025-26, Scotland accounted for 27.4% of the UK’s value of food and drink exports. Beverages exports (mainly whisky), worth £4.9 billion and seafood exports, worth £1.1 billion, were Scotland’s two most valuable food and drinks exports in 2025-26. Taken together, these account for 86.2% of Scotland’s food and drink exports. Since 2016-17, the value of beverages exports has decreased by 5.9% in real terms, whereas the value of seafood exports has decreased by 2.4% in real terms.
Chart 8: Scotland’s beverage exports, indexed mass and real terms value, 2016-17 to 2025-26
Chart 9, below, shows the indexed mass and volume of ‘gas, natural and manufactured’ exported from Scotland from 2016-17 to 2025-26. While the volume of gas exported increased steadily to 2021-22, before growing more slowly, there is far more volatility in the value.
The significant increase in the value of exports of gas in 2021-22 and 2022-23 coincides with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the significant increase in the wholesale price of natural gas. If we look at the ratio of value (in nominal terms) compared to the mass of exports, we can this effect quite clearly. Between 2016-17 and 2020-21, this ratio is between 0.19 and 0.37, but in 2022-23 it reaches 0.87.
Chart 9: Exports of gas by destination, indexed mass and real value, 2016-17 to 2025-26
Another sub sector of exported good which has shown considerable volatility is exported of non-ferrous metals to the USA. These have averaged about £96 million in each financial year since 2016-17. However, in 2024-25, these exports were worth £389.3 million – with £339.2 million of exports by value between January and March 2025. Future Economy Scotland note that over half of Scottish exports of non-ferrous metals are exported to the USA, and suggest that front loading activity to avoid anticipated tariffs might explain some of the activity in Q1 2025. This is shown in Chart 10, below:
Chart 10: Scottish exports of non-ferrous metals to the USA, 2016-17 to 2025-26
As mentioned earlier, SPICe have produced a more detailed briefing which sets out further details on the main data sources on Scotland’s exports, the Scottish Government’s policy in this area, and recent geopolitical events which have impacted international trade.
Andrew Feeney-Seale and Andrew Aiton, SPICe Research