EU red tape? It’s a real dog’s dinner!
Piles of export paperwork for pet food boss
A BOOMING British pet food company, which won a Queen’s award for its export success, said EU red tape could cost the firm more than £200,000 a year.
Bosses at the Canagan Group, which makes the Canagan and Symply brands, also fear the post-Brexit bureaucracy could force them to move some production and jobs to Europe.
Managing director James Milbourne says the business has been swamped with paperwork associated with health certificates and veterinary checks, which are required to export products of animal origin to Europe.
This has required hiring a vet to check and sign off documents at a cost of £950 a day, twice a week – which he said costs the business around £100,000 a year.
Staff are also spending hours filling out forms covering the ingredients and their origins for every pallet of pet food shipped out.
And in a further blow, the freight costs of sending consignments have trebled because of a shortage of foreign drivers prepared to cross the Channel amid concerns about documents and delays. An image of the paperwork for one truckload to Europe, was posted on Twitter by Mr Milbourne.
He wrote: ‘This is the paperwork required to send one order to the EU now. Previously zero. £100,000 a year of veterinary inspection fees now, previously £0.
‘ Very annoying/ costly for an established business like us, crippling for a small company!’
Mr Milbourne, whose business is based in Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire, added: ‘In the past, all we had to do was confirm the order, pick the products and put them on a pallet for shipping. Now, there are health certificates... that have to be filled out in English and then in the language of each European country they pass through.’
The company has a turnover of £35million a year. Shipping to several countries via the same truck creates a mountain of forms.
Mr Milbourne said the added admin and processing work for each order means he is facing a total bill of £200,000 a year. The company, founded in 2008, won The Queen’s Award for Enterprise in international trade in 2017.
Mr Milbourne said the situation was ‘unsustainable’, adding: ‘Such are the costs of supporting our customers in Europe that we might have to take the step of setting up some manufacturing and distribution on the Continent, which would mean transferring jobs.’
After his tweet, trade minister Greg Hands offered the businessman a Zoom meeting.