Sector hopes to catch a break as Brexit bites
With bureaucracy and red tape causing exports of salmon to fall dramatically, the fish farming industry is highlighting the risk to 2500 sector jobs and the need for immediate political action. By
WHEN Tavish Scott, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation (SSPO), speaks of the twin challenges posed to the sector by the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit, it’s with both concern and frustration. “Excessive bureaucracy” and “unacceptable red tape” are the recurring themes.
The reasons are quickly apparent: HMRC data recently published by the SSPO showed that exports of salmon have fallen by 23 per cent, with export sales of whole, fresh salmon down by £168 million in 2020, at £451m.
With farmed salmon Scotland’s number one export food export and demand remaining high both in the UK and overseas, a dramatic reduction in air transport has cut down valuable markets in the US, China and other distant destinations while exports to Europe are hampered by a burden of documentation that the SSPO believes is not fit for purpose.
In short, the ‘new normal’ is not working well enough in a sector for which freshness and delivery in one to two days is a basic and crucial requirement.
“It’s very important to both our customers and consumers and we cannot maximise this under the current system which is affecting the attractiveness of our product,” Scott points out.
“We expected that the impact of the worldwide pandemic would result in figures being down but the big concern is the significant fall in the value of exports and the underlying pressures that the sector is facing,” he says.
“While the opportunity is there for salmon farming in Scotland to be part of the recovery as the worldwide economy emerges from the Covid pandemic we need the right conditions and the right environment in which to operate.
“So we need the support of government and we need regulators to be understanding of our needs as a sector to provide healthy, nutritious food for the international marketplace and the protein that the world needs as the economies of the wider world start to pick up again.”
This sense of urgency is impelled by the dilemma faced by a sector that has 2,500 direct employees in fish farms with are another
10,000 people working in the industry right across Scot-land.
Importantly, as Scott highlights, these farms range from the Northern Isles through the north coast and Western Highlands to the Outer Hebrides and Argyll and the Clyde, in rural and island areas
We need government support and regulators to understand our needs as a sector to provide healthy food for the international marketplace
with some 3,500 supply companies receiving £6m-£7m pounds of investment from the sector every year.
“We bring a great deal of value to Scotland, both in terms of employment by creating jobs, in the taxes that we all pay and the support that we give to government by being the country’s number one food exporter,” he says.
The sector, he believes, is also at the forefront of the Scottish Government’s sustainability ambitions: last November the SSPO published A Better Future For Us All, a charter that sets the sustainability standards the sector will meet over the coming decades with commitments to be net zero in greenhouse gas emissions before 2045, highlighting the importance of the ‘blue economy’.
Meanwhile however, flying salmon around the world, as with any other commodity, has been much more costly and much more difficult during the pandemic which is a situation that is continuing and in Europe, references to “teething problems” at new border checkpoints he says minimises and disparages the challenge of any export industry operating into the EU at the moment.
“Fundamentally we are using a system of documentation that’s designed for New Zealand lamb, not a perishable product such as salmon that needs to be out of the water, into the market and on to a plate within 48-72 hours and salmon farmers are experiencing a variety of issues getting fish to market in good time.”
Yet another issue is the fact that while the system is starting to manage with current volumes, those will rise from spring onward with fears about what that will entail as many SSPO members have delayed or reduced harvests, meaning those fish will have to be harvested soon which will rapidly increase volume.
To help address this, a new Scottish Seafood Exports Taskforce, chaired by UK Government Minister for Scotland David
Duguid, met for the first time two weeks ago to discuss ongoing problems with exports, attended by UK Environment Secretary George Eustice and Fergus Ewing, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism with the Scottish Government emphasising that it
“is not a talking shop and we will provide evidence of delivery”.
Scott welcomes its establishment: “Paperwork – the burden of documentation and red tape – is causing endless delays in delivering salmon into the marketplace. And while we can try to overcome those problems as hard as we can, the basic issue is that this paperwork is completely inappropriate for the type of product and the timescales in which we are operating so that’s what are now seeking to address through the task force – because if we continue with the current documentation, the uncertainty of delivery times and all the problems that brings will continue.”
With the EU’S currently inflexible application of new customs regulations, however, is Scott confident that there is the potential for movement?
“I think the EU will start to become more flexible when their own companies exporting into the UK have to put up with exactly the same paperwork, which will start to happen at Easter time,” he says. “That is when we hope to begin to see a more sensible approach emerging from the European Commission because that is when it will come under pressure from member state governments – because by then they will be dealing with the same ludicrous paperchase as we are.”
Scott says that the SSPO has suggested to the new task force that both the UK and Scottish Governments work together to initiate immediate discussions with the European Commission over existing export documentation.
“That would not only simplify things for Scottish and UK exporters, but it would also assist importers from the EU into the UK domestic market which seems to me to be a win-win for producers and consumers across Europe.
“We hope that instead of playing politics with all of us, the governments will start to sort these problems out,” he says.
He is optimistic that progress can be made: “We have an excellent working relationship with government and with our partners in the regulatory sphere, with a shared agenda of moving the sector forward in a very positive way, both in terms of producing food for the marketplace and doing so by utilising the pristine marine environment in which we operate – and going forward that is the basis for a productive and sensible relationship for everybody.”