The UK's fastest growing ethnic business association has expanded in North and West Lancashire to help boost the region's economy.

The Asian Business Federation is now a Lancashire wide organisation and with the support from its partners, North West Development Agency, and Business Link East Lancashire, the ABF's membership has grown rapidly to 500, and it also recently launched a unique on-line retail portal for members, apnabazaar.co.uk, which translates as 'our market'.

Now with the support of Business Link West Lancashire, Learning Skills Council and Preston City Council a Preston Pre-launch event was held in the City.

The event took place at City Hall, Preston where some of the region's key business leaders and dignitaries turned out to lend their support.

Those included Hazel Harding, Leader of Lancashire County Council; Tahir Mohsan, ABF chairman and co-founder of Time Computers; Clive Memmot, chief executive of West Lancashire Business Link, Steve Palmer, Executive Director Learning and Skills Council and Jim Carr, chief executive of Preston City Council.

Tahir Mohsan, ABF Chairman, said, "The ABF has firmly established itself as a key business support agency in the region.

"The pre-launch in Preston informed the business community of the benefits of the ABF and enabled us to build partnerships so that together we can deliver bespoke business support to a wider cross section of businesses, while creating added value to our members."