Thread by @pmdfoster

🚨🚨🇬🇧🇪🇺☕️🚛⚙️✈️🇪🇺🇬🇧🚨🚨#Brexit means Brexit. Or if you’re a small company trading into the EU, it means setting up in Netherlands; or if a haulier, giving up on EU business; or fighting to trade with NI.

Three small UK companies reflect on Year One /1
on.ft.com/3GYWHSx

So starting with Hampstead Teas, run by Kiran Tawadey which sells probiotic teas across the UK, EU and rest of world

On Jan 1 she is shutting down her small Milton Keynes blending and packing plant. Five jobs will go. It's now "too complicated" to run. /2

She already moved her distribution to the Netherlands, so now she can import into EU with single large shipments, clear customs and VAT once and then freely distribute to EU 27.

And now her Oz and Japanese customers want supplying out of the EU also /3

The final decision came in Oct when her warehouse manager “saw the writing on the wall” and quit. Then the rent went up 40%. Then labour crunch.

“We couldn’t hire a new manager or a forklift driver; costs in the UK were going through the roof. It all suddenly became clear." /4

Tawadey recalled a recent trip to a rade fair in Malmo, Sweden. "The first question was ‘do you have an EU operation, because we can’t buy your product from the UK’. The minute we said we were EU-based, we were inundated with interest.” /5

This is all about those "non-tariff barriers" that the late, departed Lord Frost says he feels are overblown. They land particularly hard on small businesses like Hampstead Teas. /6

Going to be interesting to see in 2022, the extent to which EU small businesses decided the paperwork of clearing UK customs isn't worth the hassle. What that does to trade volumes and UK supply chains and input prices /7

For the second business -- @ChilternDist -- a chilled freight distributor with 50 or so articulated lorries #Brexit has meant a virtual collapse of EU business. Before #Brexit, he says 40 per cent of his business was delivering fruit, veg and pharma products in EU. /8

@ChilternDist The company invested a million in new staff and software tooling up for #Brexit but the market hasn't sustained the business which has now switched to UK.

At the same time there has been a slight uptick in pick ups of unaccompanied loads from Portsmouth/9

@ChilternDist Like a lot of UK hauliers Jackson is fuming at UK govt decision to unilaterally extend 'cabotage' rules, allowing EU drivers (who come with extended range tanks filled with cheaper diesel) to do multi pickup and drop offs in the UK. Undercutting UK drivers /10

@ChilternDist All of this is just trade adjustment and UK govt (quietly reneging on its #Brexit immigration promise via the back door with the cabotage move) but it sits will with Jackson. “In a nutshell, we’ve got all the worst bits of Brexit and none of the good things." he says /11

@ChilternDist Of course consumers and companies reliant on easing the distribution crunch may disagree....but one consequence is that Jackson won't be investing ahead of the changes to UK border in 2022. He'll wait and see. /12

@ChilternDist Lastly the aerospace parts maker Produmax which employs 74 people and ships one fifth of products to Northern Ireland, but also to countries round the world, like the Philippines.

She's struggled with both the Protocol and the haulage/labour crunch. /13

@ChilternDist Produmax FD Mandy Ridyard tells my colleague @DanielThomasLDN that the Protocol has been a struggle, making it as hard to ship to Belfast as Manila...

“We have an extra internal border now. There is a lot of extra paperwork — and a lot of extra cost that goes with it." /14

@ChilternDist @DanielThomasLDN So there you have it. The everyday travails of three businesses dealing with what happens when you build borders with your major trade partner and inside your own internal market.

It's angina, not a heart attack -- at least not after bypass surgery in the Netherlands. ENDS