For some exporters, Brexit is death knell
The Scottish seafood industry is now ‘on a knife edge’, writes Stephen Castle
Loaded with tons of live crab, lobster and prawns, the trucks headed south from the Scottish town of Oban had to reach their destination in Spain within 72 hours to be sure the cargo would survive the trip.
But with Britain operating new post-Brexit trading rules, a journey that used to be routine is now a high-stakes gamble for the exporter Paul Knight, managing director of PDK Shellfish.
“It is like roulette,” said Mr Knight, as he waved off two giant trucks, adding that although he spent tens of thousands of pounds on Brexit preparations he remained terrified that holdups in French ports could cause a large part of his shipment to perish.
“We are as Brexit-ready as we can be and we are still staring failure in the face,” he said.
“I am exhausted, the pressure is so intense — it is like being on a knife edge,” he added.
Since Britain completed the final stage of Brexit on Jan 1 and left the European Union’s single market and customs union, the world has changed for British exporters to the continent and not in a good way.
Despite a trade deal, struck by Britain and the European Union on Christmas Eve, promises once made by Brexit campaigners that leaving the bloc would free companies from needless bureaucracy now sound like a macabre joke.
Consignments that previously moved with minimal fuss now need voluminous paperwork including customs declarations and, for food products, health certificates.
Some British companies have suspended sales to continental Europe and even to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom although it now has a special customs status because of its land border with Ireland, an EU member state.
The complications pose a particular threat to Scottish seafood exporters, many of whom rely on the European market because, they say, there is no similar demand at home.
Jimmy Buchan, chief executive of the Scottish Seafood Association, a trade organisation, said the new system was “red tape gone crazy”.
There are, he added, “so many certificates required, and if they are not all aligned 100%, even if it’s a clerical error, the system rejects it.”
For companies that were already reeling from the coronavirus and a collapse in demand from the hospitality trade, the arrival of new trade rules has come as a sucker punch.
In a video posted on Twitter, Lochfyne Langoustines and Lochfyne Seafarms said that its stock was stuck at ports, that exports to the European mainland had become impossible and that the company could be forced out of business.
“Welcome to the Modern world of Brexit and the mess it brings,” it said. “Unbelievable that we find ourselves in this position.”
Victoria Leigh-Pearson, sales director of John Ross Jr, a smoked salmon producer based in Aberdeen, said entire truckloads were being rejected by French customs authorities, apparently without explanation.
“It feels as if our own government has thrown us into the cold Atlantic waters without a life jacket,” she wrote in a letter to the government.
Donna Fordyce, chief executive of Seafood Scotland, another trade group, said in a statement that the changes have unleashed layer upon layer of administrative problems, resulting in delays, border refusals and confusion.
Instead of minimal bureaucracy, exporting fish to France is now a 25-step process. As well as customs declarations, every consignment of fish and seafood needs health certification after inspection.
At the ports, traffic is still moving freely across the Channel, but that is partly because the holdups are elsewhere.
Central to moving Scottish fish to the markets in France is DFDS, a Danish logistics company that also runs ferry services. It has set up inspections at Larkhall, near Glasgow, where seafood is sent before being driven to ports and then to the continent.
But the integration with government tax and customs systems has not been smooth, forcing the company to implement slower, manual workarounds.
In Larkhall there have been delays in getting health certificates signed off and other holdups from exporters failing to send the correct paperwork.