By Padraic Halpin and Kate Holton
DUBLIN / LONDON, December 23 (Reuters) – As a major food supplier in Northern Ireland, Lynas Foodservice is purchasing more products, such as cheese, across the open border with Ireland, an EU member, to prevent bureaucratic barriers to trade are lifted with Britain after Brexit.
The supplier of coffee chains, fast food giants and pubs redirected European stocks via Dublin and sought out Irish or EU suppliers to ease the pressure, since British products require customs checks and paperwork to enter the province when the UK leave the European Union on December 31.
Northern Ireland will remain in line with the EU’s single market and goods arriving in Northern Ireland will be subject to EU customs rules.
Managing director Andrew Lynas told Reuters he expects more administrative paperwork, even if Britain closes a trade deal with the bloc, and has started looking for more products like cheese and cold meats south of the Irish border.
“The two big things we are working on are shipping goods through Dublin and how to get more products from the EU and Ireland,” he told Reuters. “We are absolutely doing this and I think that whatever happens, more than will happen.”
A subtle reorientation of parts of Northern Ireland controlled by the British towards the Republic of Ireland, almost a century since Ireland gained independence from the British crown, is one of the most intriguing consequences of Brexit.
Although Irish unity remains a distant dream or distant nightmare, Brexit has stretched the bonds that unite the United Kingdom: Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain in the EU in 2016, while England and Wales voted for output.
Preserving the delicate peace in Northern Ireland without allowing the UK a back door to EU markets across the 500-mile land border between the UK and Ireland was one of the most difficult issues in Brexit divorce negotiations.
In essence, they agreed to a fudge that keeps Northern Ireland on one foot in both camps – part of the UK’s customs territory, but also still in line with the EU’s single market for goods after 31 December.
NORTHERN IRELAND
While the agreement avoids a harsh border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and maintains the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, it complicates trade – especially between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
With £ 10.4 billion ($ 13.89 billion), Britain accounted for 60% of all goods purchased outside Northern Ireland in 2018, more than four times the amount imported from Ireland, the data showed Northern Ireland Agency for Statistics and Research.
While the level of trade across the Irish border has almost doubled since the 1998 peace agreement ended Northern Ireland’s “Problems”, Lynas said Britain is and will remain an incredibly important market, suggesting that any change post-Brexit can be incremental.
Its almost 70-year-old wholesale family business currently supplies about a third of its food products in Britain.
However, some British suppliers face a more abrupt change. Scottish seed potato suppliers will be banned from selling to the bloc – and to Northern Ireland – from 1 January.
They will remain closed until third country equivalence is granted, allowing trade in certified seed potatoes to continue.
POTATO SEEDS
Archie Gibson, the executive director of Agrico UK, which has 80 farmers in Scotland and 20 in England, says the industry has been acting as a “headless chicken” to try to export as much of the crop as possible to the EU before January 1 .
He worries about the long-term scam after an Irish buyer got new suppliers outside Britain to stock up on supermarkets.
“They tend to be very loyal, so when they move, they are not likely to run back,” he said.
The UK’s biggest supermarkets have also warned in recent weeks that they may not be able to supply the same variety of food at their stores in Northern Ireland due to uncertainty about how the new requirements will work.
A survey conducted in late November by the UK Food and Beverage Federation showed that almost 40% of companies plan to pause or reduce deliveries from Britain to Northern Ireland to adapt product lines or assess whether the market remains viable .
Three- and six-month exemptions agreed since then to protect large traders from some of the most costly barriers, such as the need to produce export health certificates for any British animal products, may ease the transition in January, but are not how to manage complex supply chains in the long run.
“The grace periods are not very long term,” said Northern Ireland Retail Consortium Director Aodhán Connolly, in one of the almost daily webinars that commercial groups are bidding on companies struggling with major changes that were announced little by little over the past two weeks.
“They are short to medium term and this shows that the EU and the UK appear to be leaning towards rebalancing Britain’s supply chain to Europe and Ireland.”
IRISH UNIT?
Although the sums involved are small, the policy is not.
The 1998 peace agreement ended three decades of homicides in the same currency, committed mainly by Irish Catholic nationalists, who opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, and mainly by pro-British Protestant supporters.
Any change in supply chains in the UK that last decades in favor of trade with all islands could boost the long-term case for Irish unity and thus destabilize the delegated power-sharing government in Belfast.
For nationalists, the benefits of a fully Irish economy are part of the defense of unity. For unionists, these trends are evidence that the union is in danger.
The largest unionist party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said it would strongly lobby against any permanent trade barriers with the rest of the United Kingdom.
“The (UK) government needs to be bold and, when necessary, be prepared to act unilaterally to sustain our full place in the single most important domestic market for us – the UK,” said the DUP earlier this month.
In the meantime, Andrew Lynas is still trying to understand everything, including potentially new rules on tariffs, trucks, commerce, labels, pallets and ports.
As a Northern Irish company that buys from Britain to sell in the province, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, it will always be difficult.
“We just want the circulation of goods,” he said. “If there are paperwork and fees to deal with, they can always be resolved. But you want to make sure that the goods flow.” ($ 1 = 0.7485 pounds)
(Edition by Guy Faulconbridge and Louise Heavens)