Scottish Development International (SDI) was formed in 2001 to attract direct foreign investment to Scotland as part of the Scottish Executive's new "Smart Successful Scotland" strategy for Scotland's international economic development. The success of SDI is demonstrated in the value of Inward Investment to Scotland which doubled to £215 million in 2005.

Scottish Development International is an award-winning organisation – find out more about our success, and why we were named as the: "... world's most consistently high-performing agency..." by DDP Global Development.

SDI combines the strengths of the former Locate in Scotland and Scottish Trade International and builds from the fantastic track record, experience and expertise which those organisations achieved working with companies since the early 1980s.

SDI is a UK Trade & Investment partner organisation. UK Trade & Investment is the UK government organisation that supports UK companies to do business internationally, and helps overseas enterprises seeking to set up or expand in the UK.

Funded entirely by the Scottish government, SDI is a joint venture between the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise and brings together the resources and capability of both organisations to deliver support for companies investing in Scotland.

In order to best support foreign investment to Scotland, SDI has offices and staff throughout the world including the UK, mainland Europe, North America and Asia.

Not only does SDI provide ongoing support to international companies based in Scotland through our inward investor support activities, but we also help Scottish companies do business internationally.

SDI aims to:

• Attract direct foreign investment, concentrating on research, design and development projects with high knowledge content
• Enhance the internationalisation capabilities of companies through the International Strategy Development
• Create partnership investments between Scottish and foreign companies and organisations to open new channels to markets, investments, technologies and products
• Increase trade growth by encouraging the expansion of Scotland's portfolio for first-class exported goods and services to new markets
• Help strike licensing deals between Scottish and overseas companies and universities

Please contact us if you would like to discuss your company's plans to invest overseas and are interested to discover what Scotland can offer.

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