Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NI trade ‘not worth hassle’
» Irish Sea border is a big turn-off » GB firms forced to hike prices
DOING trade with Northern Ireland isn’t worth the hassle of extra Brexit bureaucracy for many suppliers in the rest of the UK.
That’s the view of one food supplier here who says that his business is out £50,000 a year on extra administration costs.
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 coming into effect at the end of December, he said there were no checks required.
Mr Lynas was among business representatives giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday on the implications of the extra red tape required by the contentious arrangements governing Irish Sea trade post-brexit.
The protocol was-designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland by moving regulatory checks to the Irish Sea, specifically on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
Mr Lynas said he had already changed 25 GB suppliers as a consequence of the protocol and was having to re-orientate his supply chains toward Ireland and the rest of Europe. He said a GB
Andrew Lynas 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.
Mr Lynas added: “He’s saying, ‘It is just so difficult for me to supply you that I have to charge you more money. Now, I have a fixed contract with the schools, they’re going to get their goods, but that is a hit I am taking as a business, and we are seeing more and more GB suppliers say, ‘It is hard work to deal with you’. “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.”