GB firms say it’s too much hassle to trade with NI, warns food boss
Coleraine company has changed 25 suppliers because of extra Brexit red tape, MPS are told
A leading food services company has expressed concern that GB suppliers are deciding that trading in Northern Ireland is not worth the hassle of extra Brexit bureaucracy.
Andrew Lynas, managing director of Coleraine-based Lynas Foodservice, told MPS that buying mozzarella cheese from one of his long-standing suppliers in England now requires eight separate processes under the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Prior to the protocol none were required, he said.
Mr Lynas was giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee yesterday on the implications of the extra red tape at the Irish Sea border.
The protocol was co-designed by the EU and UK to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
It achieves that by moving regulatory and customs checks to the Irish Sea, specifically on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain. The movement of agri-food goods are particularly tightly regulated.
Mr Lynas said he had already changed 25 GB suppliers due to the protocol and was having to re-orientate his supply chains toward Ireland and the rest of Europe.
He said a GB company that he buys food from to fulfil his contract supplying Northern Ireland schools is charging him an extra £150 per load to cover administrative costs.
“He’s saying: ‘It is just so difficult for me to supply you that I have to charge you more money,’” said Mr Lynas.
He added: “If I was going to a GB supplier and saying: ‘Can I get good x from you?’... If he’s got orders from a Welsh supplier, a Scottish supplier and someone in Birmingham, and he gets my order, what position do you think my order is going to go in? Unfortunately, we know it’s going to come fourth.”
Mr Lynas said his business was facing paying an extra £50,000 in admin costs a year due to the protocol.
He said the new trading rules could hamper the post-covid recovery in Northern Ireland, particularly for hospitality businesses who are not covered by grace periods that currently limit the level of red tape. “Our greatest fear is we are trying to get up off the mat again in terms of hospitality and supply chains and volume will come back hopefully and we’re excited and people are going to go into restaurants and pubs and eat and drink.
“But then we have this problem of: how do we get goods actually there? And that supplier says: ‘I don’t have time to give you an order.’
“We’ve already changed 25 suppliers due to the realities of the Protocol.”
He added: “These are both small and large (suppliers) who said ‘this is too much hassle and work’”.
Colin Neill, chief executive of Hospitality Ulster, also gave evidence to the committee.
He noted the Government’s move to unilaterally extend grace periods limiting bureaucracy until October, but he warned that was not a permanent solution.
He told MPS: “I would much rather focus on how do we make the systems work that we’re presented with, so our industry can grow and prosper, support employment and indeed do their bit for the NI economy?”
‘We have problem of ‘how do we get the goods there?’’