THE Japanese will be swapping sushi for slug-busters thanks to a Kidderminster pensioner's business launched on the worldwide web.

Inge Beaumont, managing director of Westfield Products, has been asked to supply 32,000 slug traps to Japanese gardeners desperate to recreate English plots in the Far East.

"We had problems to begin with as I had never used a computer before," said Mrs Beaumont. "It was a steep learning curve and not without its tears. Now we are taking orders constantly off the internet."

Mrs Beaumont hopes to get a foothold in America after shipping thousands of Slug X Traps to 16 countries including the Falkland Islands, Latvia, Finland, Japan, Australia and the United States.

She says it is service that counts.

"I have been in exports all my life," said Mrs Beaumont. We don't waste a second from the moment the order arrives. It just shows that being older doesn't stop you from being successful. We have tackled a new market using new technology and it has worked."

Mrs Beaumont, who employs four pensioners and "a youngster of 40" at her Kidderminster base, says the environmentally-friendly slug traps are a simple but devastating device in which the pests literally drink themselves into an early grave by slurping up the beer.

The Sultan's Garden Centre in the Saudi capital of Riyadh placed an order for the device but officials in the alcohol-free desert kingdom insisted their supplier ditched the extra strength brew.

Eight thousand traps have already been hailed a success in Japan where gravelled gardens are giving way to lawns and flower beds in a rapidly growing trend towards English-style gardens.

"We believe that we have the product gardeners have been crying out for," said Mrs Beaumont.

"It has cleared our garden of slugs and we have had hundreds of letters from grateful customers who are thrilled to be slug free."

Westfield Products' website is www.westfield-products.co.uk