Brexit: French Companies Adapt To Added Costs, Delays

(@FahadShabbir)

Brexit: French companies adapt to added costs, delays

Tigery, France, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jan, 2021 ) :French companies must confront new procedures that have caused delays and additional costs for doing business with post-Brexit Britain, sparking concerns about an uncertain future.

"When Britain was part of the single market, delivering to a client in London was like delivering to one in Lyon," said Gary Haworth, director of Toupret, which makes fillers to repair wall cracks.

The company employs 200 people and has worked on building up its market presence in Britain in recent years.

While Britain left the EU in January last year, it stayed on in the single market for a transition period to the end of 2020.

While the post-Brexit deal that went into effect on January 1 avoids trade tariffs on most goods, customs checks have been re-established, with the resulting paperwork causing delays and added costs.

Those delays mean "we have invested more there and keep more stock in our British warehouse, because we still need to be able to deliver to clients with the same service as before," said Haworth, a British national who has spent part of his career in France.

A shipment that left Toupret's factory near Paris on January 11 arrived in Britain without problems thanks to careful preparation of customs documents.

The company had set up a team of eight people to prepare for changes stemming from Britain's withdrawal from the EU.

France Beury, who heads European and international affairs at TLF Overseas, a trade group for transport and customs facilitation firms, emphasised that companies must be prepared to now deal with Britain as a foreign country.

Although the post-Brexit trade deal was not agreed until the 11th-hour, she said its contents should not come as a surprise.

For the past year "we had an idea of the contents of the eventual accord," Beury noted.

One of the most complicated issues for companies is furnishing information for the rules of origin requirement.

In order for goods to be exempt from tariffs a certain threshold of local content must be met, which means companies must gather paperwork from their suppliers.

Beury said that while there have not been any major problems so far, trade across the Channel was slow until mid-January, and it probably will not be fully clear if the new system functions at full tempo until the end of February.