Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)

AutoTuning

andrewfaulk wrote: »

M&S basically will have a choice, invest in IE based supply chain or leave the market..

Given their financial performance the last few years, I think the second option may be more likely..

But hope I'm wrong because I am a fan of their chocolate chip cookies

The only logical thing they could do would be to create M&S Food EU to supply the Irish and French stores.

Otherwise, they’ll be writing off huge investment in France and here. They’ve just done major refurbishment of stores and all sorts of things, but it’s not exactly unusual for that company to misstep very badly abroad. They’ve been in and out of France more times than a Eurostar train. Opening with great gusto, only to close again a few years later due to some miscalculation of the market.

They’re not a typical case though and I’m not really sur that you could call M&S Food a supermarket, certainly not a mainstream one anyway. They’re more like a specialist convenience store format. They’re not really like any other model of supermarket as it’s almost all private label (own brand) and mostly ready meals and semi prepared foods.

Their French operation is closer to say Pret A Manger than it is a supermarket. Mostly their stores are like the one in Heuston station - grab and go food items.

If they do close here, they aren’t likely to go completely. I could see them becoming a clothes retailer only and either removing are much reducing the food sections if they can’t supply them. Whether that’s viable for them or not, who knows!

I wouldn’t conflate M&S food halls with the mainstream of food retail and supermarkets though. It’s very much a different model and extremely unusual supply chain.

andrewfaulk

grayzer75 wrote: »

There's not enough capacity or infrastructure to just bypass UK distribution and a big issue is around groupage at the moment because the documentation is a nightmare so hauliers are just looking for straight loads at the moment.

Its more than hauliers not wanting groupage, its also UK based companies not realizing the administrative nightmare they are creating by shipping mixed loads with 200-300 products in the same truck.. And the haulier might think its a full load from point A in the UK to point B in Ireland, but not realize what they are hauling is a customs mess..

A lot of thinking it will be fine, hoping someone else will sort it out, and not realizing that the old pre-Brexit business models aren't sustainable anymore with a customs border to pass through

Hurrache

grayzer75 wrote: »

Only 10% of the usual traffic has come through so far. Tesco are impacted like everyone else as we do so loads for them out of the distribution centres near Liverpool. The big issue at the moment is with the meat / dairy based products coming via the UK distribution centres as the the loads have to be vet sealed and there's a lot more declarations to be completed. Some loads have been held up at Larne already.

Yeah, but that tends to be ready meals, not their fresh foods, as their milk and dairy is Irish.

If stuff has been held in Larne, it's probably for Tesco NI, which is Tesco UK, not Tesco Ireland, and they have a large distribution centre up there too. In terms of loads coming into the republic, in comparison to the number of loads they have, the number held up or stopped is very small.

J Mysterio

Pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU relocates to Waterford

Campaign migrates registered office for its website so it can retain .eu internet address

Horrible to see these people with a presence here, even if only as window dressing.

An Ciarraioch

A story in this week's Kerry's Eye about the landbridge vis-a-vis the Dunkirk ferry - a local company that exports animal carcasses to Germany said that in 2020 the landbridge route would typically cost €700 (€300 to Holyhead, €200 Eurotunnel, €200 fuel costs), but that the Dunkirk ferry cost double that at €1,400! Of course, costs for the latter may come down if demand remains high, but with that differential, one wonders about the long-term practicality for businesses.

AutoTuning

I would say Tesco NI will just be rolled into Tesco Ireland operationally. It’s not that big a deal for them to do that.

The same would apply to Aldi & Lidl and a big chunk of the NI market is also Musgraves and Dunnes.

I could see Sainsbury’s few stores in NI just being purchased by one of the other players with scale here.

It’s an opportunity for Dunnes to expand into grocery in NI in a bigger way.

This isn’t a situation that’s just going to resolve in a matter of a few months or something. They’ll need to make serious long term decisions.

grayzer75

andrewfaulk wrote: »

Its more than hauliers not wanting groupage, its also UK based companies not realizing the administrative nightmare they are creating by shipping mixed loads with 200-300 products in the same truck.. And the haulier might think its a full load from point A in the UK to point B in Ireland, but not realize what they are hauling is a customs mess..

A lot of thinking it will be fine, hoping someone else will sort it out, and not realizing that the old pre-Brexit business models aren't sustainable anymore with a customs border to pass through

That's what I said, hauliers don't want groupage back to the island of Ireland at the moment due to the documentation sh*tshow. We have approx 12 trailers in the UK waiting full loads back to Ireland. Goods are moving freely enough from UK to continental Europe but coming this way seems to be a big problem.

We had a couple of trucks on an Irish Ferries sailing into Dub on new years day and there was less than 20 trucks on a sailing which usually takes approx 250. We can't get capacity on the new Dunkirk to Rosslare route for another 3 months as the really big players have it all block booked.

jmreire

I think that even if we did not have brexit to contend with, covid has really upset normal manufacturing and production supply lines world wide.Global shipping was one of the first things to be affected, as far back as March 2020 when the virus hit.It has not fully recovered yet, and its hard to say when it will be back to normal. The next few months will be a bit on the bumpy side....as a friend of mine who works for a multi-national said, it's the perfect storm, logistics wise. As a result of reduced shipping, producers are short on empty containers, while they are stacking up at the delivery sites.

Hurrache

AutoTuning wrote: »

I would say Tesco NI will just be rolled into Tesco Ireland operationally. It’s not that big a deal for them to do that.

If may eventually head that way for financial purposes. For a while they had a limited cross over in terms of head office roles between the north and the republic but I think it was shortlived.

Re own brand ready meals. Labelling may actually be one of the hold ups too. With them leaving the EU the already printed and produced labels and packaging would no longer be permissible in the EU. Neither they nor their packaging suppliers were going to take a hit in scrapping them and doing another run, or have someone manually sticker them all, so they would have decided to run to the end of their current stock before the UK/EU labelling came online.

AutoTuning

The state and EU really need to financially support ferry routes ASAP

I’m not convinced the market will just take care of it.

grayzer75

Hurrache wrote: »

If may eventually head that way for financial purposes. For a while they had a limited cross over in terms of head office roles between the north and the republic but I think it was shortlived.

Re own brand ready meals. Labelling may actually be one of the hold ups too. With them leaving the EU the already printed and produced labels and packaging would no longer be permissible in the EU. Neither they nor their packaging suppliers were going to take a hit in scrapping them and doing another run, or have someone manually sticker them all, so they would have decided to run to the end of their current stock before the UK/EU labelling came online.

A lot of the UK distribution centres got caught out on the new sealing requirements - we waited over 24 hours to get a vet to seal a full load of pizza's on a reefer coming back this way. It's going to take months to smooth out this mess.

Hurrache

So despite the Irish crowd being prepared, their UK equivalent dragged their heals perpetuating delays throughout their entire network. Nothing unusual from their UK head office though.

ambro25

AutoTuning wrote: »

(...M&S...) obviously have no strategy or contingency to deal with this in Irish or French stores. It doesn’t make sense not to have had. They have had years to plan for this. For a company on that scale to be in ‘deer caught in headlights’ mode is absolutely shocking.

M&S is *far* from being alone in that situation.

It's just that M&S is well known brand that makes it a highly-visible part of a very tall and mostly submerged iceberg, a sizeable volume of which is made up of UK service businesses.

Our group is global, but happens to be one of the biggest names in IP legal services in the UK, and is effectively UK-headed and -run. The stories I could tell about their Brexit planning and mitigating. Put it that way: I've opened my LinkedIn profile to headhunters (a bit more explicitly) since Monday, even though my office is on the Continent.

grayzer75

Hurrache wrote: »

So despite the Irish crowd being prepared, their UK equivalent dragged their heals perpetuating delays throughout their entire network. Nothing unusual from their UK head office though.

I don't think they realised how much more difficult it was going to be coming this way especially if the goods are transiting ROI into NI lol.

jmreire

ambro25 wrote: »

M&S is *far* from being alone in that situation.

It's just that M&S is well known brand that makes it a highly-visible part of a very tall and mostly submerged iceberg, a sizeable volume of which is made up of UK service businesses.

Our group is global, but happens to be one of the biggest names in IP legal services in the UK, and is effectively UK-headed and -run. The stories I could tell about their Brexit planning and mitigating. Put it that way: I've opened my LinkedIn profile to headhunters (a bit more explicitly) since Monday, even though my office is on the Continent.

I doubt very much if you will be alone in that....unfortunately .

ancapailldorcha

ambro25 wrote: »

Our group is global, but happens to be one of the biggest names in IP legal services in the UK, and is effectively UK-headed and -run. The stories I could tell about their Brexit planning and mitigating. Put it that way: I've opened my LinkedIn profile to headhunters (a bit more explicitly) since Monday, even though my office is on the Continent.

I thought you'd already relocated to the continent.

kowloon

rock22 wrote: »

Ebay still list UK sellers as being in the EU and it is impossible to select only EU sellers.

UK listings still show up as "Zero customs charges". Stuff I have listed will say the same to UK buyers so they'll get pissy at me if they get caught for tax. Not ideal.

peter kern

[PHP][/PHP]

AutoTuning wrote: »

The state and EU really need to financially support ferry routes ASAP

I’m not convinced the market will just take care of it.

in fairness this is a task which should be taken on entirely by the eu,

andrewfaulk

grayzer75 wrote: »

That's what I said, hauliers don't want groupage back to the island of Ireland at the moment due to the documentation sh*tshow. We have approx 12 trailers in the UK waiting full loads back to Ireland. Goods are moving freely enough from UK to continental Europe but coming this way seems to be a big problem.

We had a couple of trucks on an Irish Ferries sailing into Dub on new years day and there was less than 20 trucks on a sailing which usually takes approx 250. We can't get capacity on the new Dunkirk to Rosslare route for another 3 months as the really big players have it all block booked.

Groupage is multiple shipments, often from different suppliers to different customers etc..

What I'm saying is the issue is UK companies that have treated Ireland as part of the UK up to now, so have an RDC in the UK supplying Ireland.. The load is from one shipper to one customer(shop in Ireland), but has some many little orders of different products that its basically impossible to import customs clear.. Even more so when food and goods of non-UK origin come into play..

Hadn't heard about Rosslare to Dunkirk being fully booked out, but might explain why Irish Ferries have swapped vessels on their Dublin-Cherbourg service with the one on Dublin-Holyhead to give them more capacity to the EU at the expense of the UK..

andrewfaulk

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

A story in this week's Kerry's Eye about the landbridge vis-a-vis the Dunkirk ferry - a local company that exports animal carcasses to Germany said that in 2020 the landbridge route would typically cost €700 (€300 to Holyhead, €200 Eurotunnel, €200 fuel costs), but that the Dunkirk ferry cost double that at €1,400! Of course, costs for the latter may come down if demand remains high, but with that differential, one wonders about the long-term practicality for businesses.

€700 from Kerry to Germany, doesn't sound right.. Unless driving costs aren't being taken into account..

Although it might be possible by reefer container, not sure why you would pay a premium to ship frozen dead animals

andrewfaulk

ambro25 wrote: »

M&S is *far* from being alone in that situation.

It's just that M&S is well known brand that makes it a highly-visible part of a very tall and mostly submerged iceberg, a sizeable volume of which is made up of UK service businesses.

Our group is global, but happens to be one of the biggest names in IP legal services in the UK, and is effectively UK-headed and -run. The stories I could tell about their Brexit planning and mitigating. Put it that way: I've opened my LinkedIn profile to headhunters (a bit more explicitly) since Monday, even though my office is on the Continent.

Agree fully, M&S is just a well known brand to the media..

Have heard of a very large known car manufacturer that is having issues also, as Ireland was treated as part of the UK market.

Enzokk

And so the mask slips,

Tory peer urges Boris Johnson to scrap EU worker and environmental protections now Brexit is done

A Tory peer recently ennobled by Boris Johnson has urged the prime minister to remove EU consumer and worker protections now that Brexit has happened.

Daniel Hannan has said safeguards on the use of data, workers rights, GM foods, and environmental standards should be scrapped.

"Change is coming. To succeed outside the EU, we need to be fitter, leaner and more globally engaged," the former MEP said.

This comes after Johnson promised to start breaking free from EU rules, adding that Britons "have nothing to fear".

Under the trade agreement Johnson signed, Brussels has the power to inflict wide-ranging tariffs or other sanctions on the UK if it breaches the so-called "level playing field".

This is Daniel Hannan of, "No one is threatening our place in the single market" quote. He either knowingly lied or he didn't know. Either way this is another broken promise and you can see where this will all end up eventually. If you tell Mr Hannan this on Twitter you will get blocked as well, he isn't fond of people pointing out his on file interviews.

ancapailldorcha

Mod: Off topic posts removed.

CelticRambler

AutoTuning wrote: »

However, when you start looking at ready meals, frozen meals etc, that’s where you start getting into complications.

grayzer75 wrote: »

A lot of the UK distribution centres got caught out on the new sealing requirements - we waited over 24 hours to get a vet to seal a full load of pizza's on a reefer coming back this way.

There is absolutely no reason for anyone working in chilled food production to have been caught out by this - the problem has been known about and highlighted for three years ... to anyone who'd listen.

As soon as the UK government indicated that it's preferred position on the "Barnier Staircase" would be, at best on one of the bottom two steps, it triggered a perfect storm:
- Chilled food imports are treated as dangerous, infected, contaminated sludge unless proven otherwise; the chilled (rather than frozen) nature of the product means it can't be parked up for a week while waiting for lab results to come back, and its processed nature means it's just too easy for unscrupulous operators to pass one thing off as another.
- So these products were always going to need veterinary certification and rigorous control at the point of import
- That particular veterinary work is amongst the least glamorous, least well paid in the profession, is consequently chronically understaffed and is typically carried out by ... EU migrant vets
- Freedom of Movement restrictions and the ending of mutual recognition of professional qualifications meant that the UK turned off the flow of cheap EU vets, even if they were largely exempt from the restrictions by virtue of vets being an endangered species in the UK
- Nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done by the government to address this problem since the warnings were issued three years ago; and there was never even a hint of UK capitulation in respect of the FoM and Santitary/Phyto-Sanitary measures needed to fix it.

Exporters of chilled meat/dairy-based ready meals have only themselves to blame for not reading what was written on the walls, on the internet, on the government's own documentation; and importers of UK chilled meals have been just as negligent in assuming "shur it'll be grand".

Professor Moriarty

Enzokk wrote: »

And so the mask slips,

Tory peer urges Boris Johnson to scrap EU worker and environmental protections now Brexit is done




This is Daniel Hannan of, "No one is threatening our place in the single market" quote. He either knowingly lied or he didn't know. Either way this is another broken promise and you can see where this will all end up eventually. If you tell Mr Hannan this on Twitter you will get blocked as well, he isn't fond of people pointing out his on file interviews.

That would be par for the course for Hannan. His views would make Thatcher sound like Karl Marx.

ancapailldorcha

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Mod: Off topic posts removed.

Mod: New thread here:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=115837853#post115837853

Please feel free to discuss Irish-EU trade matters post-Brexit there. Thanks.

druss

Enzokk wrote: »

And so the mask slips,

Tory peer urges Boris Johnson to scrap EU worker and environmental protections now Brexit is done



This is Daniel Hannan of, "No one is threatening our place in the single market" quote. He either knowingly lied or he didn't know. Either way this is another broken promise and you can see where this will all end up eventually. If you tell Mr Hannan this on Twitter you will get blocked as well, he isn't fond of people pointing out his on file interviews.

TBF to Hannan, he has been reasonably consistent on most of the above scrap list. And he is rarely consistent on anything else.

Even in his greatest literary achievement in 2016, he implies getting rid of REACH rules, data rules and worker protections. He doesn't say anything about the environment.

I still like to read the 2016 Opus, at least once a month. Never fails to cheer me up.

Strangely, his enthusiasm is rarely shared by actual practitioners.

Seth Brundle

J Mysterio wrote: »

Pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU relocates to Waterford

Campaign migrates registered office for its website so it can retain .eu internet address

Horrible to see these people with a presence here, even if only as window dressing.

The company that registered it in Ireland is "BETTER FOR THE COUNTRY DIGITAL MARKETING" - any idea who they are? Im not sure if they have an online presence ironically!
https://whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?domain=leave.eu

L1011

Seth Brundle wrote: »

The company that registered it in Ireland is "BETTER FOR THE COUNTRY DIGITAL MARKETING" - any idea who they are? Im not sure if they have an online presence ironically!
https://whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?domain=leave.eu

Aaron Banks is the 100% shareholder; for starters. Two UK directors and a token Irish director from a company formations company.

Lemming

L1011 wrote: »

Aaron Banks is the 100% shareholder; for starters. Two UK directors and a token Irish director from a company formations company.

There are no Irish listed officers for either Leave.EU or "Better for the Country" according to Companies House, from the UK registered angle at least. CRO has a listing but you have to pay to see details

Better for the Country; no current (or prior) officers
with Irish nationality nor residence.

• Arron Banks (British, residency: England)
• Elizabeth Bilney (British, residency: United Kingdom)
• Penelope Murphy (British, residency: Australia)
• Alison Marshall (British, residency: Wales)
• Andrew Wigmore (British, residency: England)

Leave.EU
Current officers lying charlatans:

• Arron Banks (British, residency: England)
• Elizabeth Bilney (British, residency: United Kingdom)
• Jacobus Coetzee (British, residency: England)
• Penelope Murphy (British, residency: Australia)