UK companies invest €750m in Germany after Brexit

BRITISH companies have poured more than €750m (£650m) into Germany after setting up European Union outposts in the wake of Brexit.

The number of Uk-funded projects in Germany last year surged by more than a fifth to the second highest total ever, according to data from Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI), the country’s economic development agency.

British investors set up 170 projects in 2022, making them the third largest cohort of foreign direct investors in Germany, after the US and Switzerland.

The UK recorded the largest year-onyear rise in projects of any of the top four countries investing in Germany in 2022, knocking China into fourth place. In total, the British invested at least €750m in German projects in 2022.

The largest investment was from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, which is building a central European hub in Bitburg that will be its second-largest location worldwide.

Other investors included e-commerce company Huboo; hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer Proton Motor Fuel Cell; digital printing and branding services THEMPC; and a chemicals recycling project backed by the UK’S Mura Technology in partnership with the US company Dow. Robert Scheid, director of GTAI’S London office, said: “The UK has developed into a new Switzerland for us because they are outside the EU legal framework.”

Foreign direct investment from Britain into Germany has boomed since the Brexit vote. Mr Scheid said: “Since 2014 we have seen the number of companies setting up investment projects more than double.”

British investors backed 190 projects in Germany in 2019, a record high since

‘The UK has developed into a new Switzerland for us because they are outside the EU legal framework’

GTAI began in 2009. But then this trajectory was quashed by Covid. There were about 100 projects in 2020, before bouncing back in 2021.

Post-brexit adjustment, many of the companies were setting up warehouses and infrastructure to serve central European markets, Mr Scheid said.

Back in 2019, half of the British companies setting up in Germany were doing so because they needed a legal entity in the EU to continue operating successfully, Mr Scheid said.

Now, projects are concentrated in financial services and software.