exported the table, changed table name prefix in export to the new one, imported. Most worked so thats great!
Just a side note, the import didnt seem to bring in the same order for variants listing, so now I have variants with mixed up orders and unfortunately the variants dont seem to have a way of ordering them still apart from the way they are created , so big ouchy still as I now need to step through each product, check the ordering of the variant and delete them all and re create them if they are wrong:(