Scotland Food and Drink, a trading body, estimates that seafood retailers lose £ 1 million ($ 1.4 million) a day, putting some businesses days away from collapse. Donna Fordyce, CEO of Seafood Scotland, said the price of various types of seafood destined for the EU market had fallen by between 40% and 50% as processors struggled to find products in Europe.
“Losses for the sector are increasing and the situation is urgent,” she said in a statement last week.
One company, which normally sends £ 1 million ($ 1.4 million) of seafood to the European Union every week, manages to get just £ 12,000 ($ 16,300) worth of product in the block the week before last and has 27 suppliers. told to stop fishing.
“Getting something from the UK into the EU is achieved through luck rather than design,” Fordyce said. “It was inevitable, since such a complicated process was put together at the last minute.”
After months of fraudulent negotiations, the UK and the European Union reached a trade agreement on December 24, leaving businesses and customs officials with almost no time to familiarize themselves with new rules that began on January 1st.
“What they want us to do now is just impossible to work with live shellfish. Times, costs involved, paperwork, it’s crazy,” Allan Miller, owner of AM Shellfish, in Aberdeen, told CNN Business on Monday outside Downing Street said.
‘If they do not change [the process] many of these companies are not going to work anymore, “he said. Many of these fishing communities have been fishing for generations. What are they going to do? ”
Johnson spoke in Oxford on Monday, saying British exporters would be compensated for losses caused by bureaucratic delays. Describing the current issues as ‘teeth problems’, he said the government had set up a £ 100m ($ 136m) fund to help the British fishing industry seize ‘great opportunities’.
The prime minister also blames the closure of restaurants in Europe for a drop in demand for British fish.
Problems in Scotland
DR Collin & Sons, a seafood company south of Edinburgh, usually ships one to two trucks a day to France, each containing £ 150,000 ($ 204,000) of live crayfish, crabs and langoustines. The company, which employs 200 people, has lost more than 90% of its revenue since January 1, according to Transportation chief David Rosie.
“We’re one of the bigger companies, but it certainly does not look good. For the smaller businesses, they have weeks, maybe days,” he told CNN Business.
The 70-year-old firm sent truck drivers and factory workers more lobster by air freight to Asia than it sold to neighbors in Europe. “We sell more to China and the Far East than to the EU, it’s unheard of in the industry,” he added.
Rosie said the company could not get the right paperwork from the UK Revenue and Customs Authority to move its products through France. It had to bring catches back to the sea because it could not get the products from customers fast enough.
Some fishermen undertake a 72-hour round trip across the North Sea to Denmark to speed up entry into Europe, so that their catch ‘will actually find its way to the market while still being fresh enough to meet customers’ needs comply ‘, according to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation.
“Many in our industry now fear for their future,” federation chief executive Elspeth Macdonald said in a letter to Johnson on Friday. The fisheries agreement is ‘desperately poor’ and not what the British government promised the industry, she added.
McMillan has threatened to dump rotten shellfish outside British parliament buildings if he and other Scottish exporters cannot get their product on the market.
– Will Godley and Sarah Dean reportg.