The UK’s biggest grocery retailers have warned that its businesses in Northern Ireland will be hammered by rising costs and trade disruption under the terms of the Brexit protocol.
Six of the country’s largest retailers, which represent three-quarters of Northern Ireland’s grocery market, have written to ministers calling for urgent action to address the future of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Bosses at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Marks & Spencer, Iceland and the Co-op have warned that they may need to move their supply chains from Britain to the EU as a result of the added costs and complexities of moving goods into Northern Ireland.
From October, retailers face increased red tape at Northern Irish ports under the terms of the Brexit deal, including additional checks, paperwork requirements and the need for Export Health Certificates on products originating from animals.
The letter, sent to Brexit minister, Lord Frost, and vice president of the European Commission for Interinstitutional Relations, Maroš Šefčovič, has called on UK and EU governments to hold urgent talks with British retailers, visit their distribution centres and host meetings with supply chains experts in a bid to thrash out a solution.
Warnings of major disruption in Northern Ireland
Retailers warn in the letter that, “without swift, decisive, and cooperative movement on this issue there will be disruption”. And they have called on officials to “help us to minimise this disruption and allow us to continue to provide the people of Northern Ireland with choice and affordability.”
British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson said: “The end to the NI grace period looms in the mind of every British retailer with supply chains in Northern Ireland.
“If no action is taken, then it will be the people the Northern Ireland, with half of the discretionary income of GB households, who bear the brunt of this stalemate – meaning less choice and higher costs for essential food purchases. Already, new red tape is causing delays, there are surging additional costs, and we are seeing challenges to ‘just-in-time’ supply chains.”
She added: “We need to see real ambition from both sides to provide a compromise that benefits those most impacted: the people of Northern Ireland. Our members made significant investments in the last few months to avoid disruption, yet disruption will become inevitable if the regime that will come into force in October is unrealistic and disproportionately onerous. Retailers have shown their compliance - the government and EU must now help us by removing the barriers to GB-NI supply chains.”
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