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Shellfish firms hope EU deal will 'lift a burden'

Paul MurphyEast Yorkshire and Lincolnshire climate and environment correspondent
BBC A woman with curly blond hair is standing on a harbourside in front of black lobster pots and brown wooden pallets, with fishing boats in the background. She is wearing a dark-blue coat over a mid-blue shirt.BBC
Jo Ackers, from the Independent Shellfishermen's Co-Operative, says exports currently have to be signed off by a vet

Food producers have welcomed a draft deal between the UK and the EU which could remove checks on exports that were put in place after Brexit.

The agreement should mean savings for the shellfish industry in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, which exports lobster and crab to France, Spain and Portugal and generates at least £10m for the local economy.

Jo Ackers, from the Independent Shellfisherman's Co-operative, said it would "lift a burden" from businesses exporting produce.

"All of our exports have needed to be signed off by vets because they are live exports and this involves significant expense and paperwork," she said.

The BBC understands a 200-page draft text for a so-called SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement has been circulated to EU nations in Brussels.

Since the UK formally left the EU in January 2020, many food exports have needed extra certificates to confirm the product meets the health requirements of the destination country.

If approved, the new deal should remove the need for export health certificates (EHC), as well as some of the fees connected with ports and inspection.

Bridlington is Europe's leading shell-fishing port, according to the co-operative, but Ackers estimates the paperwork costs her organisation around £20,000 per year.

"The worst part of it is that if something is wrong with the paperwork, we get consignments [of lobster] cancelled, we have to travel across the country to pick our product up again."

A man with cropped grey hair is standing in front of a long row of cheese 'wheels' which are stacked on shelves behind him. He is smiling and wearing a dark-blue fleece over a mid-blue T-shirt.
Lincolnshire cheese-maker Tim Jones says his industry could benefit from less "red tape"

Among those who could benefit from the draft deal are cheese makers. Since Brexit, all UK dairy products have required an EHC.

According to Tim Jones, who runs Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese, in Alford, "removing it will definitely help".

"One curious example is that to enter awards overseas we need veterinary approval, which for our recent submission to the World Cheese Awards in Spain cost us £300, and we only sent a few kilograms of cheese," he said.

Most of the company's products are sent into the EU by a specialist London-based exporter, Jones said.

"It will certainly cut a lot of cost and bureaucracy out for them," he added.

Jon Walsh, the chief executive and co-founder of Bio&Me, which makes granola, muesli and yoghurt, told BBC 5 Live that the draft deal sounded like "really good news".

"We're just a small company but when we were trying to export our yoghurts before, every time we'd send a pallet we had to pay a vet to inspect it and that was £140, and that meant that you'd lose money... so we had to stop."

Bloomberg via Getty Images Several lorries are queuing at a border check point. There are a number of customs' booths and each roadway through these is labelled 'frontier control'. Bloomberg via Getty Images
Export checks add to costs and cause delays, according to the British Chambers of Commerce

William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the requirement for EHCs could add thousands of pounds of costs to each truck carrying goods, in addition "to the delays that people find at the ports or at the borders".

"We get lower exports because of the delays and the massive increases in costs that have come into the supply chain," he told the BBC's Today programme.

When it comes to shellfish, Ackers said the restrictions imposed after Brexit meant some companies had stopped exporting.

She remained "cautious" about planning future operations on the export side of the business.

"Until any of these deals with the EU are finalised, we're still doing the same as we were," she added.

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