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EU and UK barriers are permanent.

EU UK barriers

 Owner Sam Martin's range of premium beard oils and hair balms took off rapidly when his company was founded in 2012. However, export growth halted when the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) came into force on December 31, 2020. «Before Brexit, our business was 75 per cent exports and the rest in the UK, but Brexit has pretty much turned that number on its head because of the costs and difficulties of getting products to those countries,» he said. In a report to mark the second anniversary of the TCA, the British Chambers of Commerce said Martin's frustrations were typical of small and medium-sized companies that were facing «structural» rather than temporary problems with the deal. «There are very few easy fixes to the many problems that businesses face trading with Europe, but it is disappointing that almost two years after the TCA was first agreed, nothing has been done to find solutions to some of these issues,» she said.

Chief among the BCC's demands is a Swiss-style deal with Brussels to eliminate checks on plant and animal products, a Norway-style deal to reduce complexities around the value-added tax on low-value imports, and unilateral recognition of EU industrial and electronic product standards. In the longer term, the BCC says the UK should consider an EU-UK deal for VAT and an agreement to deepen EU cooperation on product regulation and facilitating professional services when the TCA comes up for its five-yearly review in 2026. When he announced the eleventh-hour deal with Brussels on Christmas Eve 2020, then prime minister Boris Johnson said «no non-tariff barriers to trade» would arise from TCA. However, Martin noted Apothecary 87 faced a host of post-Brexit challenges, including higher import costs caused by a weaker pound, longer lead times for obtaining ingredients, the need for cosmetic import licences, EU border checks and payment of import VAT, all of which deterred EU customers.

He added that online retail customers in the EU that had previously bought a single £10 product were facing VAT and handling charges that more than doubled or tripled the price. At the same time, barber shops in Italy and Spain were forced to obtain cosmetic import licences for up to €1,000 each. «Only a true 'superfan' of our products could accept these higher prices,» said Martin. Analysis by Aston Business School suggests exports to the EU are 26 per cent lower than they would have been without the non-tariff barriers imposed by the TCA. William Bain, the BCC's head of trade policy, said it was notable that the responses to the annual membership survey had become increasingly embittered as businesses realised the barriers posed by the TCA were not temporary but permanent and structural.

Mark Newton, the company's managing director, said he had battled to hold on to EU clients, representing about 30 to 40 per cent of the business's exports. However, the government said that the TCA had secured UK businesses' market access across crucial service sectors and opened new opportunities for UK businesses across the globe.

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  1. Josh22 December 2022 at 20:24

    Brexit is probably one of the worst mistakes made by the UK in a very, very long time. The problems it brought will be felt by businesses and regular people for decades.

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