Photographer: Ben Stansall / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Ben Stansall / AFP / Getty Images
Services and upgrades for custom Grizzly Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which import spare seats, exhaust systems and other parts from Germany.
This week, the owner of the firm based in Folkestone, England, has received a two-line email with bad news: his German supplier stops all shipments to the UK indefinitely due to Brexit.
“I deflated,” Paul Hayes-Watkins said. His business is now struggling to find alternative sources of parts. “If that is the future,” he said, “I can also close the doors.”
Grizzly’s experience is a sign of how Britain’s exit from the European Union’s single market on 31 December is already wreaking havoc on companies ’supply chains. Companies of all sizes try to avoid getting caught up in the likely delays at the border when new controls and formalities come into force, even if Britain and the EU manage to reach a trade agreement.
Specac Ltd., a manufacturer of laboratory equipment in the London suburb of Orpington, imports metal subassemblies from the Czech Republic and exports around 15% of its products to the EU. The firm has put a that of all imports and exports until 15 January to avoid any early Brexit disruption.
Incorrect stationery
“There will be people who put things on the road that don’t have the wrong paperwork,” said David Smith, CEO of Specac. His company placed its orders soon to overcome the winter crisis. “If we didn’t have our own that, companies like us could be behind the queue “.
Britain has an early taste of border congestion due to a storage frenzy. The long queues approaching the busy ports of Dover and Calais this month forced the Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co. a temporarily closed its factory in Swindon, England. As a trade agreement between the UK and the EU is not yet guaranteed, the purchase of goods means buyers can now avoid paying tariffs that could be charged from 1 January.
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Pooch & Mutt, a British importer of gourmet pet food from Spain and the Czech Republic, said it has experienced a 150% increase in the cost of bringing goods to the UK in recent weeks. He has had difficulty reserving time slots for trucks.
“All logistics is just a nightmare,” said Guy Blaskey, the company’s founder, who expects spending to comply with the new Brexit bureaucracy will add 3% to its cost base. “We’ve warned our customers that maybe we should look at price increases.”
In another sign of pressure on British supply chains, Europe’s largest truck owner said this week it would set aside deliveries to the UK after Brexit if there are borderline messes.
The challenge is particularly acute for importers of fresh produce, who cannot store too much because the goods will spoil.
Bini Ludlow, the company that prepares luxury Indian prepared dishes in Somerset, has been buying additional tomatoes and onions from the mainland before the Brexit deadline, making batches and putting them in the freezer.
“There will be delays in everything,” he said. “It will upset us all.”
| Law and frontier |
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| To see how complicated it will be to move goods across the channel from next year, you can play our The border game of Brexit here. |