,
9 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
If you’re one of Northern Ireland’s biggest Agrifood businesses how do you mitigate the potential impact of no deal? For Fane Valley it’s involved spending about £20m across the border in Donegal. 
Fane Valley turns over more than £500m a year. A big part of the business is supplying animal feed on all-island basis. It’s feed mill is in Omagh in NI.
In order to guarantee supply to customers on the southern side it’s had to buy the Smyths Daleside mill in Donegal.
There is a tremendous historical resonance to this bit of border hedging.
Robert Smyths & Sons, Animal Feed Millers was founded in Strabane (in what is now Northern Ireland) in 1865 by Robert Smyth. At partition they needed a premises on the southern side of the border. It’s that southern premises that Fane Valley has bought.
I’ve been speaking to Fane Valley’s chief exec for the BBC’s no deal day. He says that for the Republic of Ireland’s red meat industry Brexit is already happening.
Buyers in GB are shifting supply chains away from RoI to GB to make sure they have security of supply in the event of no deal.
He also emphasises that from an economic perspective the issue of whether or not the Irish govt has to carry out checks at the border is not the main event.
What matters is that the legal & regulatory environment changes overnight. There will be tariffs. There will be non-tariff barriers. Very quickly this will render some cross border trade uneconomical.
