Feb 15, 2021
London – As the new year made Brexit a reality, Tony Hale encountered the pitfalls of Europe’s redrawn political geography. Specifically, he confronted the need to extricate 53 tons of rotting pork products from administrative purgatory at a port in the Netherlands.
For more than two decades, Hale’s company had shipped pork to the European Union without customs checks, as if the United Kingdom and the continent across the water were one vast country.
With the U.K. now legally outside the bloc, exporters have suddenly had to navigate inspections, safety regulations and a bewildering crush of paperwork.
For Hale, incorrectly prepared documents meant sending five containers full of pork to an unplanned final destination: the incinerator.
A couple of hundred tons of mussels that would have previously fetched about 160,000 euros ($194,000) now lie in the muck, not worth harvesting. Mr. Wilson has furloughed three of his six workers.
Even those who can reach European markets have discovered that the promised bonfire of regulations is actually a burning hell of paperwork.
In the southwest of England, a few miles from the village that gave its name to Cheddar cheese, one cheesemaker, Lye Cross, anticipates spending an extra £125,000 ($173,000) a year to comply with the administrative requirements that have accompanied Brexit. A transaction that last year entailed seven steps, including paying and invoicing, now runs to 39, said Ben Hutchins, the company’s sales and marketing director.
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Stonemanor in Brussels has not received a delivery from the UK since before the New Year and had to shut up shop at two of its two stores last weekend for the first time in nearly 40 years. Brits living in the Belgian capital usually make a pilgrimage to Stonemanor to stock up treats from home such as British bacon and sausages and well known UK brands of crisps and biscuits.
But that have been faced with empty fridges and shelves in recent weeks and in many cases left empty-handed and disappointed.