Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Brexit disaster for cheesemaker
The Guardian reports that a British cheesemaker who predicted Brexit would cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds in exports has called the UK’s departure from the EU single market a disaster, after losing his entire wholesale and retail business in the bloc over the past year:
Simon Spurrell, the co-founder of the Cheshire Cheese Company, said personal advice from a government minister to pursue non-EU markets to compensate for his losses had proved to be “an expensive joke”.
“It turns out our greatest competitor on the planet is the UK government because every time they do a fantastic deal, they kick us out of that market – starting with the Brexit deal,” he said.
Spurrell predicted in January that Brexit would cost him £250,000 in sales. “We lost £270,000, so I got one thing right,” he said, describing the post-Brexit EU trade deal as the “biggest disaster that any government has ever negotiated in the history of trade negotiations”.
His online retail business was hit immediately after the Brexit negotiator David Frost failed to secure a frictionless trade deal addressing sales to individual customers in the EU.
Spurrell said he had lost 20% of sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on each order, including gift packs costing £25 or £30. He said the viability of his online retail had come to a “dead stop”.
After he embarked on a personal crusade to draw attention to the plight of UK exporters involving almost 200 media interviews around the world, he was invited to an online meeting with Victoria Prentis, a minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She suggested that emerging markets could compensate for the Brexit-related hole in the Cheshire Cheese Company’s finances.
Spurrell said he had pursued new business in Norway and Canada but post-Brexit trade deals sealed by the government had put barriers in place.
“We no longer have any ability to deal with the EU as our three distributors in Germany, France and Italy have said we have become too expensive because of the new checks and paperwork.
“And now we’ve also lost Norway since the trade deal, as duty for wholesale is 273%. Then we tried Canada but what the government didn’t tell us is that duty of 244% is applied on any consignment over $20 [£15].”
That meant Canadian customers who ordered a gift pack worth £50, including transport fees, were asked to pay £178 extra in duty when the courier arrived at their door, Spurrell said. “As you can imagine, customers were saying: ‘You can take that back, we don’t want it anymore’.”
Norwegian duty on a £30 cheese pack amounted to £190 extra, he said.
So much for these much-heralded trade deals and taking back control. This is the reality of Brexit.
Simon Spurrell, the co-founder of the Cheshire Cheese Company, said personal advice from a government minister to pursue non-EU markets to compensate for his losses had proved to be “an expensive joke”.
“It turns out our greatest competitor on the planet is the UK government because every time they do a fantastic deal, they kick us out of that market – starting with the Brexit deal,” he said.
Spurrell predicted in January that Brexit would cost him £250,000 in sales. “We lost £270,000, so I got one thing right,” he said, describing the post-Brexit EU trade deal as the “biggest disaster that any government has ever negotiated in the history of trade negotiations”.
His online retail business was hit immediately after the Brexit negotiator David Frost failed to secure a frictionless trade deal addressing sales to individual customers in the EU.
Spurrell said he had lost 20% of sales overnight after discovering he needed to provide a £180 health certificate on each order, including gift packs costing £25 or £30. He said the viability of his online retail had come to a “dead stop”.
After he embarked on a personal crusade to draw attention to the plight of UK exporters involving almost 200 media interviews around the world, he was invited to an online meeting with Victoria Prentis, a minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She suggested that emerging markets could compensate for the Brexit-related hole in the Cheshire Cheese Company’s finances.
Spurrell said he had pursued new business in Norway and Canada but post-Brexit trade deals sealed by the government had put barriers in place.
“We no longer have any ability to deal with the EU as our three distributors in Germany, France and Italy have said we have become too expensive because of the new checks and paperwork.
“And now we’ve also lost Norway since the trade deal, as duty for wholesale is 273%. Then we tried Canada but what the government didn’t tell us is that duty of 244% is applied on any consignment over $20 [£15].”
That meant Canadian customers who ordered a gift pack worth £50, including transport fees, were asked to pay £178 extra in duty when the courier arrived at their door, Spurrell said. “As you can imagine, customers were saying: ‘You can take that back, we don’t want it anymore’.”
Norwegian duty on a £30 cheese pack amounted to £190 extra, he said.
So much for these much-heralded trade deals and taking back control. This is the reality of Brexit.
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It was clear a long time ago that the UK would be negotiating from a position of desperate weakness post Brexit - no seasoned trade negotiators to carry out the negotiations, no time to complete them effectively, foreign governments determined to exploit this and a domestic government prepared to sacrifice anything (fishing, agriculture, manufacturing) no mater how damaging - except of course themselves. The one thing they needed was the pretence of them delivering on their promises so bad deal after bad deal has been agreed, heralded by incompetent ministers as triumphs, but each destroying another bit of the UK economy.
Also each trade deal is effectively permanent as it sets a baseline for both sides for any future extension - both sides will want a win for them. Our problem is that the Conservatives only care that it is a win for the Conservatives, the rest of the UK can go hang.
Our problem as a party is that we haven't even tried to hold the conservatives to account for this mess, ever since Ed declared us not a party of rejoin. His one and only chance to make a statement that would resonate in the media and in the longer term be proved right and he sacrificed it for a "let's try to appeal to everyone once again".
I realise that many will cling to the 'We've just had two by-election wins, we're coming back' mantra, but that's the 50 year long slog to get back to 60 MPs (if we're lucky) and is totally founded on Boris Johnson and his manifest integrity issues, and that will disappear within three or four years once the Conservatives dispose of him.
We had to make the problem stick on the Conservatives for giving us Boris, not just on the man himself who can be disposed of in a twinkling (maybe one more by-election loss, two at most). I don't see any indication in the Lib Dem's leading lights that they have any idea what we will use to replace Boris-phobia when he is gone or even a realisation that they actually will need something else.
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Also each trade deal is effectively permanent as it sets a baseline for both sides for any future extension - both sides will want a win for them. Our problem is that the Conservatives only care that it is a win for the Conservatives, the rest of the UK can go hang.
Our problem as a party is that we haven't even tried to hold the conservatives to account for this mess, ever since Ed declared us not a party of rejoin. His one and only chance to make a statement that would resonate in the media and in the longer term be proved right and he sacrificed it for a "let's try to appeal to everyone once again".
I realise that many will cling to the 'We've just had two by-election wins, we're coming back' mantra, but that's the 50 year long slog to get back to 60 MPs (if we're lucky) and is totally founded on Boris Johnson and his manifest integrity issues, and that will disappear within three or four years once the Conservatives dispose of him.
We had to make the problem stick on the Conservatives for giving us Boris, not just on the man himself who can be disposed of in a twinkling (maybe one more by-election loss, two at most). I don't see any indication in the Lib Dem's leading lights that they have any idea what we will use to replace Boris-phobia when he is gone or even a realisation that they actually will need something else.
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