CHANNEL CROSSING REMAINS VITAL
Britain may have left the European Union but markets across the Channel remain vitally important and there are still good opportunities out there for Lancashire businesses.
Richard Burn, HM Trade Commissioner for Europe, is on a mission to help those companies succeed in the new trading environment.
Speaking to the conference from south west France, he pointed out that around half of the UK’s exports go to European countries.
He said: “My job is to support exporters, to help them identify new opportunities, to help them land successfully in Europe and help them with any overseas investment work and to encourage inward investment into the UK.”
He added that despite the impact of the Covid crisis and the new rules and regulations covering imports and exports the EU “the opportunities are still there.”
And he stressed that there was “an army of people” ready to help exporters with those new processes. He told the conference: “There is a lot of help available to use in overcoming some of these difficulties.”
He said: “Models of business distribution are changing as people realise there are complexities at the EU borders.”
Richard said Lancashire was a known centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing and aerospace with a strong supply chain. And he told the conference there were export opportunities for the county in sectors such as clean energy.
Models of business distribution are changing as people
realise there are complexities at the EU borders
Sajjad Karim, former MEP for the North West and chief executive of consultancy Haider Global, joined the conference from Karachi in Pakistan.
His time in Brussels has given him extensive experience in trade- related issues and he was a spokesman to the WTO.
He told the conference: “It struck me two or three years ago that while in trade terms everyone always seems to speak about tariffs, that is only part of the picture. The bigger obstacle is friction and non-tariff barriers.”
That was why it was “imperative” the UK got as good a trade deal with the EU as possible, to keep that friction and those non-tariff barriers to an absolute minimum.
Richard Burn Sajjad Karim
He said that there was an acknowledgement that some barriers would not be easy to overcome and as a result some companies would need to look at other markets.
And he was quick to point out that trade with Europe doesn’t just mean the EU and that the DiT was seeing a “significant increase” in interest in exporting to countries outside the block.
Sajjad said his hope was that the UK would eventually arrive at a position to keep trade with the EU flowing as freely as possible. He added: “I hope that is the direction of travel.”
He said that the UK was in an “interesting period” with challenges over the union and the preservation of its own internal market.
And he told the conference the country had also to look beyond its relationship with the EU. The government had increased its outreach work globally as the UK looked for new markets further afield.
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INTERNATIONAL TRADE
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