HOLYHEAD, Wales – Under swirling gray clouds, Bryan Anderson leaned out of his truck’s cab window to vent his frustration with the new paperwork that had already delayed his trip through Britain’s second largest ferry port amid day.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Anderson, explaining how he spent hours waiting in a deposit 250 miles away for export documents required because of Brexit. The delay meant that he arrived in Holyhead, Wales, too late for the ferry he planned to take to Dublin, and the next one, too.
“I’m about 12 hours late,” he said as he finally got ready to drive aboard the Stena Adventurer to Dublin to deliver a package of packages to Ireland’s courier service.
The fear of hassles and bureaucracy stemming from the introduction of the new rules governing Britain’s trade with the European Union, which came into force on January 1, has led to dire congestion predictions in British ports.
But so far, the opposite has happened. In addition to tough souls like Mr. Anderson, truckers are increasingly avoiding ports like Holyhead. They fear the mountains of paperwork now required for trips that last month involved little more than driving to a ferry in one country and leaving in another.
On Thursday, only two dozen other trucks were waiting for the same ferry as Mr. Anderson in a large, but almost empty, parking lot next to the port. Holyhead is operating at half its normal capacity and the team has been placed on leave.
“It is very uncomfortable to go through this,” said Anderson.
After months of uncertainty and tense negotiations, Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally struck a trade deal with the European Union on Christmas Eve. Thus, when Britain left the European single market and the customs union on January 1, it avoided the chaos seen during a general rehearsal of the border closure by the French authorities in December.
However, the old system that allowed frictionless travel to and from European nations is over. Despite claims by supporters that Brexit would cut red tape, companies need to produce millions of customs declarations, as well as new documents, such as health certificates for food and proof of origin for a wide variety of products. Mixed product shipments – like the packages Mr. Anderson carried – can mean a lot of paperwork for drivers to cover everything that is being transported.
Across Britain, the impact of the rules took traders by surprise, triggering a chain reaction that threatened some jobs and livelihoods.
Outraged at the costly delays, Scottish seafood exporters blocked Parliament in London in protest. A truck loaded with chips destined for a supermarket in Northern Ireland was detained for two days while the truck company tried to prove the origin of the potatoes they were made from, according to a British lawmaker. And more than 600 truck drivers were fined for breaking a rule created to avoid congestion that requires them to have a license to approach Britain’s busiest port, Dover, in Kent.
Under the new rules, truck drivers must register their shipments with the authorities before arriving at the ports. Relatively few arrive without the paperwork – only 7 percent in Holyhead, according to the port.
But this is because many are stuck elsewhere, waiting for documents.
The new system also raised questions about the future of one of Europe’s busiest trade routes, between Ireland, which remains part of the European Union, and continental Europe.
The fastest truck route is usually by ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, then east to Dover on the coast of England and from there a short ferry ride to Calais, France.
Before the Brexit changes, this journey across the “land bridge” was cheap and reliable, required almost no paperwork and allowed trucks to drop cargo along the way.
But that route has been obstructed by a tangle of bureaucracy, and many companies are opting for direct services between Ireland and France to stay within the European Union.
Whether this reflects initial problems or a fundamental change is unclear, and changes have been welcomed in some sectors.
Some environmental activists hope that the drop in trade will be permanent and will reduce the number of trucks crossing Britain.
Port operators expected a drop in trade, as companies emptied the stocks they had built in December, if there was no commercial agreement. The pandemic has also hit trade and tourism, as companies are adapting to filling out forms from the Brexit era.
But there are fears that the attack on ports like Holyhead could have lasting implications.
“Very high alarm signals are ringing,” said Rhun ap Iorwerth, a member of Welsh Senedd, or Parliament, of Plaid Cymru, a party that defends Wales’ independence.
“It is clear that trade is declining massively at the port,” he said. “I hope it is a temporary phenomenon, but I fear that new negotiation patterns are being established here and I worry about jobs. The less traffic in the port, the less people need to work in the port. “
Virginia Crosbie, legislator for the Johnson Conservative Party, said she hoped “That the fluctuations in the transport patterns we are seeing at the moment will be short term”, citing the benefits of the “overland bridge” route through England.
Others are more dubious, noting that eight weekend ferry services from Holyhead to Dublin have already been canceled, while those between Ireland and France have been increased.
“Given the choice, I think a lot of that traffic has shifted to direct routes,” said William Calderbank, port operations manager at Holyhead, which is operated by Stena Line, adding that while it expects a lot of business return, some of it won’t.
To make matters worse for Holyhead, it is also losing business to ports in Scotland and northern England that offer routes to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, which generally require less red tape.
It now makes little sense to ship goods to Northern Ireland via Holyhead and then by truck north through Ireland – a popular route previously.
And while companies are expected to improve in filling out paperwork, they face additional changes in the future. The British government is implementing its own post-Brexit rules, waiving the approval of most imports.
But starting in July, it will apply full controls, as the Irish and French do now.
“We are only in phase one of Brexit, we have another coming in July,” said Calderbank.
This will increase the burden for companies that already face complex regulations.
Andrew Kinsella, managing director of Gwynedd Shipping, a shipping company based in Holyhead, described how a shipment was kept in Ireland for seven hours, while authorities questioned whether it should be certified as a dairy product because of the milk contained in the pieces of chocolate from cookies.
Holyhead “is a ghost town,” he said. “You don’t see the normal, steady flow of vehicles every day; you are lucky to see a handful of trucks when the ferries arrive. “
At Road King, a Holyhead truck stop, another driver, Rob Lucas, was still parked in the middle of the afternoon at the place where he arrived at 6 am to await clearance to take a cargo to the port.
He had no idea when the text message authorizing him to move would arrive, but he knew that the delay had already hampered his schedule the next day.
“The only way to explain it is to say that everything went freely, there was no waiting for paperwork; but last friday i was locked up in Kent for five hours, ”he said.
“We are all stuck in limbo – one of our boys was here for four days in early January,” said Lucas. “It’s terrible, absolutely terrible,” he added, and “I can only see it get worse before it gets better.”