It's now only 80 days before we leave the European Customs Union.
From all of the conversations we're having with importers, exporters and the industry communications we're seeing, we're getting the very strong feeling that UK importers and exporters (particularly the small-medium sized customers or SMEs) aren't prepared for BREXIT. It could be because they''re distracted by COVID-19 or that they are hoping for the elusive "deal" to be agreed, but they need to make certain preparations regardless (deal or no deal) as we'll have a Customs border from 1-Jan as will the EU.
Because we become so involved with importers and exporters in the course of our Freight Reviews, Freight Management and Customs Compliance work, and have over the last 11 years, we know that many companies find the freight and Customs acronyms, so-called "logistics speak" to be a big turnoff, and they often expect their freight forwarder to "sort it out" for them and no doubt many will be thinking something similar now.
Thing is, the BREXIT changes have wider impacts than freight forwarding, there are other areas which will be impacted, and there are actions only you, the importer or exporter can take, but not many companies have fully digested this, and it's understandable.
So we thought, let's take a helicopter view of the post-BREXIT landscape, map out everything which will be affected, Customs, freight, pricing, delivery times and translate it into plain English (as much as is possible) and then share it with our customers, some of whom do use us to manage their EU imports/exports (although that's not been our main focus, most appoint us to review and then manage their non-EU traffic eg imports from Asia/US as this has hitherto been more complicated and offers more opportunity to reduce cost and improve performance).
Our pdf guide is free to download from the homepage of our website, summarizes the BREXIT situation as it is today and is split into 2 sections, so importers and exporters can use the bespoke guidance. We've had some very positive feedback from our customers since we sent out the guide and we also had our bulletin featured by the UK's leading daily logistics publication, Lloyds Loading List on 9th October who were very interested in what we'd done.
So that's it really, it may not be perfect but I am confident it will help you cut through the confusion and help you to protect your business, it may even give you a competitive advantage, pretty vital in these challenging times!
Kind Regards
Andy Cliff
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