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Confusion and cost overruns due to the new Brexit bureaucracy: "We travel in losses"

2021-01-17T16:25:50.657Z


Trucking companies are particularly affected by the changing relationship between the UK and the EU “Everything will be confiscated. Welcome to Brexit, sir ”. The video of a Dutch customs agent seizing a ham and cheese sandwich from a trucker recently arrived from the UK by ferry has circulated like wildfire this week. The perplexed man asks if he can at least keep the bread, and finally leaves with a refusal and an empty stomach. It's one of the divorce scenes, but its impact goes beyond a hand


“Everything will be confiscated.

Welcome to Brexit, sir ”.

The video of a Dutch customs agent seizing a ham and cheese sandwich from a trucker recently arrived from the UK by ferry has circulated like wildfire this week.

The perplexed man asks if he can at least keep the bread, and finally leaves with a refusal and an empty stomach.

It's one of the divorce scenes, but its impact goes beyond a handful of anecdotes.

Sometimes it hits where it hurts the most: in the pocket.

"If before a trip from Spain to the United Kingdom and back lasted nine days, now it can last up to 13," explains Rafael Fuentes, CEO of Grupo Fuentes, one of the Spanish companies that brings the most trucks to the United Kingdom, almost 200 every day seven days a week, 90% loaded with fruits, vegetables and other food products and the rest of clothes and other merchandise.

The Murcian firm blames the delays on a bureaucracy incompatible with the unbridled pace of shipments: “Before they asked us for an urgent truck to the United Kingdom and as we have muscle, we would load it even if it was ten at night and it would go up.

Not now.

You have to request it the day before and prepare the documentation ”, he laments.

As Benjamin Franklin wrote in his

Advice to a Young Trader,

time is money.

Fuentes calculates that a truck costs an average of 450 euros per day, so that two days of setbacks can mean 900 euros per truck, which multiplied by thousands of trucks per month adds up to a good amount.

"If the loss of time is consolidated, we will have to renegotiate with clients to transfer costs, because trips to the United Kingdom are at a loss."

Murcia, the orchard of Europe, is home to many of these companies, which save time by being closer to the place where shipments are produced.

Transportes Juan Gómez also has its headquarters there.

When your accountant, Jesús López, hears the question on the phone, what has changed with Brexit?

it is forceful.

“We have noticed a 100% change.

Everything that was a simple transit like to any EU country, has now become more complex than to a third country like Switzerland ”.

Its fleet is more modest.

They send five or six trucks loaded with fruit and vegetables from Murcia or Valencia to the UK, and they try to return from the Islands with furniture to make the trip profitable.

"We have started to work without being clear about the documentation we need," he acknowledges.

"On Wednesday we tried to do the procedure for the exit customs, but it closed at six, so the truck had to wait until the next morning, when an agency sent it, which is another expense," he says.

The high supply of trucks means that for now they do not consider raising prices.

“What I hope will happen is that many carriers do not want to go to the UK, the supply is lower than the demand and the price to the customer can be increased.

We even prefer to leave the United Kingdom empty than burdened by the problems we have, ”he says.

López believes that customs are not dimensioned in Spain to assume exchanges with a commercial partner as important as the United Kingdom.

From the Spanish Confederation of Freight Transport they ask the authorities to act. "We hope that measures will be adopted to correct this situation, since otherwise there will be many carriers who will give up continuing to provide services in the United Kingdom, or the increase in costs will be affected in the prices of services ”.

Companies agree that UK authorities are being less strict.

"When the English Government begins to take documentation checks more seriously, it is likely that the step will slow down between eight and 12 hours, right now they are being permissive, they are not reviewing everything they should, but one day that will end," he says Sources.

Perhaps because it is not the same to close the doors to a partner than to 27, and the images of an eventual shortage would be lethal for Downing Street, which has sold Brexit as the recovery of a sovereignty ceded to Brussels for decades.

"You caught me entering the Eurotunnel, passing customs with the documentation, can I call you at another time?"

The Granada-born truck driver Javier Laredo, a self-employed person, makes about 25 trips to the UK each year.

When the phone rings, it eats up kilometers on the first trip of the year.

The conversation picks up 200 kilometers from Paris, when he is back after having unloaded peppers from El Ejido in a London warehouse.

Laredo explains that he had to go to the port of Almería to complete the customs procedure.

It took about 45 minutes to give the documentation, but then the passage of the Eurotunnel was agile thanks to the QR code that it carried.

On the way back, despite traveling empty, French agents stopped his vehicle and searched it, something unusual.

The delay meant that he had to pick up the new cargo that awaited him in France a day later.

"It has not been a destruction to me because the merchandise must arrive on Monday and I go with margin, but if it had been during the week ...".

The Andalusian truck driver suffered firsthand the chaos at the end of the year, when France closed the border to stop the spread of the new strain of coronavirus detected in British territory.

Compared to those four days stranded, Brexit has only given him minor annoyances, although by not loading in the United Kingdom he has not had to pass British customs, and he believes it is too early to draw conclusions.

"We got to buy 60% British, now it is less than 1%"

After the agreement sealed

in extremis

by London and Brussels, the worst predictions of a border collapse have not come true.

The Spanish Department of Customs and Special Taxes points out that "at the moment there are no significant incidents", although the commercial office of Spain in London has noticed an increase in inquiries about rules of origin, labeling, VAT or posting of workers.

The president of CEOE Internacional, Marta Blanco, considers that the new scenario "has created confusion in many companies."

Exporters of goods are now subject to new procedures that sometimes involve extra costs.

“If before, many companies delivered goods to their warehouse, now they have to do it at the destination port or at the end customer's warehouse.

This change has led to many of them having to take charge of transport, customs procedures and even transport between the port of destination and the final customer's warehouse ”, adds Blanco.

For industries such as meat, the worst has not yet come.

They are not required to have a health certificate until April 1, when remote documentary controls will begin, and until July 1 they can enter from anywhere in the country.

As of that date, they will have to cross through a border control point, where there will be identity checks and records, according to the Anice sector employer, which is already receiving inquiries about the procedures.

The Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries has warned that the new procedures, logistics and border control are complicating exports to the United Kingdom, and it is essential to provide advice to companies so that the procedures do not lead them to give up exporting to the UK.

"If companies have not prepared, they are going to have a bad time," they warn from the Spanish Association of Foreign Trade Professionals.

Cristina Mangas, manager of the Extremadura cheese factory Tierra de Barros, does not plan to stop making shipments for now, but she does change habits.

Each shipment with Brexit means an extra 50 euros, so instead of sending them every week, you will group the orders and do it every two.

Its star product, the mud cake, a soft paste sheep's cheese, will continue to travel.

“The cost is not the worst, before you took out the merchandise with the commercial document and it was like selling to the town store, and now you need other documentation.

The information has been pouring out ", he complains.

Juan Andrés Sánchez, 45, head of Conquista Extremeña, which among other products sells wines and oils in the United Kingdom, will also continue to trade beyond the English Channel.

Sánchez believes that the greatest danger of Brexit is that the EU is no longer a preferred partner, and exporters from Africa, especially Morocco, with cheaper products, will have an easier time competing with EU ones.

In the opposite direction, Elena Marcos, owner of the Ébano decoration store, works in León.

For years, it has imported English porcelain, natural cosmetics or plastic bags.

Anticipating the arrival of Brexit and bureaucratic hassle, he decided to bet on suppliers from France.

“We got to buy 60% British, now it is less than 1%.

I didn't want to risk customs holding my order for a month.

The big loser is England, the manufacturers with whom we have spoken are burned because they have lost throughout Europe ”, he says.

On British soil, some complaints are also beginning to be heard beyond the ham and cheese sandwich that ended up in the bin.

One of the most bitter has been that of Scottish salmon and seafood exporters, who have seen many of their buyers reject their product because it did not arrive fresh due to administrative delays.

“We do not send rolls of toilet paper or electronic devices, we export perishable seafood of the highest quality that have a limited window to reach the market in optimal conditions.

In a short time they could destroy a centuries-old market, "they criticized in a statement.

Brexit has probably disappointed the prophets of the apocalypse, but at the very least it is causing some headaches.

Source: elparis

All business articles on 2021-01-17

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