Fruit grower: Brexit could finish us
ONE of Britain’s biggest fruit growers, which supplies Tesco with apples, has warned that it may not be able to keep trading without access to EU workers to pick its fruit.
Kent-based fruit firm Adrian Scripps said it faces ‘so much uncertainty’ over its ability to function as a fresh produce business in future.
‘Whilst the weather is normally the biggest risk we face, the Brexit vote has overshadowed that,’ the company added.
Adrian Scripps, which employs around 220 fruit pickers every summer from the EU, urged the Government to allow seasonal staff to continue working here. ‘If this is not the case, profits – if there are any – will crash into negative territory and drastic action will have to be taken. We can deal with weather risks but these sorts of shocks we cannot,’ the company said in a statement accompanying its annual results.
James Simpson, the firm’s managing director, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It doesn’t matter how much we advertise or try to recruit locally we are unable to fill the harvesting vacancies we have with local staff.’
Simpson said the firm, which turned over £11.5 million in the year to April 2017, is investing in robots, but warned they will not come quickly enough to replace lost workers.
SEPARATELY, a top German central banker last night told The Mail on Sunday he believes the UK will not reap ‘any economic benefits at all’ from Brexit.
On a visit to the City of London last week, Andreas Dombret, a Deutsche Bundesbank board member, also warned that it was ‘realistic’ there will be no Brexit deal agreed in financial services.
‘I urge banks to prepare for the worst,’ he said.