[ad_1]
A director of a British transport company with more than 20 years of experience has recounted how EU carriers and transport companies are turning their backs on UK companies because they are asked to provide tens of thousands of pounds in guarantees to cover VAT or possible tariffs upon arrival. in Great Britain.
The financial guarantee requirement didn’t exist before Brexit and EU freight companies that previously provided a shipping service for small and medium-sized businesses decided they don’t want the additional financial burden, according to Colin Jeffries, who heads Key Cargo International at Manchester.
“We have people who are trying to bring textiles from Italy, but they tell us that there is no availability of transport in that. No one is willing to touch anything because of these guarantees. In Poland, we are trying to put masks for PPE in the workplace and we cannot get anyone to bring them ”.
Jeffries, who has been in the freight forwarding business for 24 years, said his business nearly came to a halt last week due to sudden trade barriers erected on January 1.
He said it was “a real carnage” to try to get EU carriers to come to Britain, because they underestimated the severity of the financial guarantees, known as T1, which now apply to goods being exported to the UK.
A truck with a load of £ 200,000 would need cash or a T1 financial guarantee document worth £ 40,000 in VAT alone, he said, a significant burden for haulage companies with multiple trucks going to the UK.
Before Brexit, these guarantees were not necessary for goods from the EU.
“Many agents who are completing T1s have run out of collateral funds, which they need to have in place,” he added.
He spoke as data showed a growing number of freight groups rejected contracts to move goods from France to Britain in the second week of January.
Transporeon, a German software company that works with 100,000 logistics service providers, said freight forwarders had turned down jobs to move goods from Germany, Italy and Poland to Britain.
In the second week of January, the rate of refusal of transport to the United Kingdom increased 168% compared to the third quarter of 2020 and doubled in the first calendar week of the year.
Jeffries said one of the problems was how difficult exporting to the UK had become.
While goods were able to navigate through British ports before Brexit, now EU suppliers, such as UK exporters, had to provide a large amount of paperwork before export, in addition to the T1 financial guarantee.
In addition to the customs declaration and the T1 financial guarantee, they must provide a Rex document (Registered Exporter System) to certify the origin of the product, which will determine if tariffs will apply on entry to the UK or if they are subject to preferential treatment. .
Jeffries also criticized the government for its repeated saying to companies telling them to go to freight forwarders or customs agents to prepare them for Brexit.
“They have not given freight forwarders a magic book,” he said. “Many people think we have insider knowledge because the government says go to a freight forwarder or customs. But we have not been given any information. We are investigating this like everyone else, and like everyone else, you can only get access to some systems as of January 1, so you didn’t have time to test the systems until it went live.
