The UK may or may not be set for a white Christmas but it will be exporting more than 5,000 tonnes of snow before 25 December.

Much of it will come from the 140 types of fake snow, frost and ice exported by a Gloucester firm.

Snow Business has supplied film productions including Gladiator, the Grinch and Harry Potter as well as exotic enterprises.

British-made fake snow has been sent to a Santa's grotto in Venezuela and even to a Siberian nightclub where it falls on clubbers.

Decoration designs

The Department of Trade and Industry is celebrating the fake snow exporter as an example of the contribution of small businesses to Britain's annual �188bn worth of exports.

Other big-selling Yuletide exports include an Essex firm's alcohol-free version of the traditional Christmas pudding - big in dry countries such as Dubai and Kuwait - and hand-made seasonal decorations.

Over 5,000 different designs will be exported to the US this Christmas.

UK entrepreneurs are also keeping heads warm in unusual places with one firm in Northumberland supplying bobble hats in Iceland.

Baroness Symons, minister for international trade, said: "For UK firms, Christmas is a vital point in the trade cycle.

"The fact that so many firms are producing imaginative seasonal products and finding export markets for them is a fantastic credit to the UK's small firms."