By Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) – Many Scottish fishermen have stopped exporting to European Union markets after the post-Brexit bureaucracy put the system that used to put fresh langoustines and scallops in French shops just over a day after harvest, crushed it.
Fishing exporters told Reuters their businesses could become unsafe after health certificates, customs declarations and other paperwork were added at the time of delivery and hundreds of pounds added to the cost of each load.
Business owners said they were trying to send small deliveries to France and Spain to test the new systems this week, but it took five hours to obtain a health certificate in Scotland, a document needed for other customs paperwork .
In the first working week after Brexit, one-day deliveries took three or more days – if it came through at all.
Owners could not say with certainty where their valuables were. A trading group has ordered boats to stop exporting supplies.
“Our customers are pulling out,” Santiago Buesa of SB Fish told Reuters. “We are fresh produce and the customers expect it to be fresh, so do not buy it. It is a disaster.”
On Thursday night, the largest logistics provider in the Scottish fishing industry, DFDS Scotland, told customers that it had taken the ‘extraordinary step’ to stop the export grouping, when several product lines are being transported, until Monday to address IT issues, paper errors and trying to solve the backlog.
Scotland harvests large quantities of langoustines, scallops, oysters, lobsters and mussels from sea fish along its fortified Atlantic coast, which is rushed by truck to decorate the tables of European diners in Paris, Brussels and Madrid.
But Britain’s departure from the EU track introduced paperwork and costs to move goods across the new customs border, the biggest change in trade since the start of the single market in 1993.
Those who trade in food and livestock meet the strictest requirements and skip the fast delivery of freshly caught fish that had earlier moved overnight from Scotland via England to France, before heading to other European markets for days.
David Noble, whose Aegirfish buys from the Scottish navy to export to Europe, said he would have to pay between £ 500 and £ 600 ($ 815) a day for paperwork, eliminating most of the profits.
His concern is that it’s more than just dental problems, and says he can not pass on the higher cost of doing business. “I wonder if I should go on,” he said.
“If our fish is too expensive, our customers will buy elsewhere.”
CENTURY-MARKET
In the internal market, European food could be processed and packaged in Britain, and then sent back to the EU for sale. But Britain’s pursuit of a long-distance relationship means that its trade agreement does not cover all interactions between the two sides.
Gaps have already appeared on French and Irish store shelves.
Brexit has strained the ties that bind the UK: while England and Wales voted to leave the EU in 2016, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted.
Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon used Brexit as part of her argument that Scotland should seek independence.
She said on Friday that exporters were paying a high price, a particular concern for Scotland’s world-class seafood sector.
Fishermen across Britain have accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of treason after he had previously promised to take control of British waters again. With little new control and little access to customer markets, is very desperate.
Fishing trade bodies said that errors in filling out paperwork mean that entire consignments are checked. According to a union of a French fishmonger, numerous seafood trucks were detained at the customs point in Boulogne for several hours and even up to a day due to faulty paperwork.
Although it would have to improve over time, and IT issues had to be resolved, Seafood Scotland warned that they would see the “destruction of a centuries-old market” if that did not happen.
Fergus Ewing, Scottish secretary of the rural economy, said it was better to identify and solve problems in Scotland than hundreds of miles away.
SB Fish’s Buesa, angry at suggestions that traders are not prepared, said all his paperwork is correct and demands to know why business leaders are no longer making a fuss.
He owns the business with his father, has been exporting for 28 years and employs about 50 people. “I’m in the trenches here,” he said. “It’s a timetable.”
($ 1 = 0.7363 lbs)
(Additional reporting by Richard Lough in Paris; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Catherine Evans)