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The product preserves trading conditions between UK sellers and EU buyers just like they were before Brexit,” said Redpath. “It has been a gamechanger for us.”


Europa Flow cost £5 million but the investment is paying off. “We’ve not yet recouped the investment cost, but we’re not far off,” said Redpath. “The cost of not doing these things doesn’t bear thinking about.”


Europa recruited an extra 40 staff at its hub operation in Dartford to handle the extra procedures. Group turnover of £220m in 2020 is heading towards £266m in 2021 for the company’s warehouse, air and sea operations.


Redpath added: “We expect to see greater certainty and stability with no more Brexit changes after 1 January 2022, so we can put all of our energies back into ‘business as usual’.”


Full of Middle Eastern promise


Kent County Council notes that the pandemic has accelerated some economic trends that were already present and that some businesses have “pivoted” to new markets. An interesting example is Westerham- based fresh produce distribution company Produce Plus (headline picture), which suffered significant upheaval from Brexit.


“It’s really tough at the moment,” admitted Paul Knights, the owner and operator of Produce Plus. “We’ve been exporting Kentish and other British-grown produce into the EU for about six years. It’s now a lot more difficult, costly and complicated, especially having to pay VAT when goods arrive in an EU country. It makes us less attractive.”


Nevertheless, he is positive about the future. “We started preparing straight after the EU referendum result, including setting up a company in Europe to handle the administrative side. We have been proactive and learned quickly,” he said.


A priority for the company was to ensure its customers didn’t have to “take on the grief” of complicated new customs and VAT regulations. Like Europa, Produce Plus has taken on much of this burden, so customers notice relatively little difference in terms of dealing with paperwork compared with pre-Brexit times.


Covid-19 presented a different set of challenges for the business, whose main line is distributing potatoes. “We


Kent business snapshot


SMEs dominate Kent is home to 64,700 enterprises, a 1.1% year-on-year increase, which is a higher rate than the national rise of 0.5%.


99.4% are companies operating in the private sector.


Nine out of 10 employ fewer than nine people. In 2019, there were nearly 8,500 business start-ups in the county.


Source: kent.gov.uk 22 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 businessmag.co.uk


had problems when chip-making factories stopped ordering because all the fish and chip shops were closed during the lockdown. It forced us to sell potatoes at £40 per tonne rather than the usual £200 per tonne,” said Knights.


Currently, companies involved in food production and distribution are at what he describes as “the sharp end” of lorry driver shortages and rising energy costs. However, he sees a silver lining of the Brexit conundrum in the fact that it forced his company to look beyond Europe to new export markets.


Around 15% of its business is now with companies in the Middle East and Asia. Produce Plus exports Kentish strawberries and cherries as far afield as Japan and Hong Kong.


Knights’ optimism about the future is based to a large degree on Produce Plus working with like-minded smaller producers and logistics companies. Together, they are seeking out new markets as a way of combatting the dual pressures of selling into Europe and the low-cost food demands of the UK’s major supermarket chains.


In the longer term there remains a wider issue for UK exporters to consider, he believes. “The UK is very good at producing first-class produce, especially to meet the very high standards demanded by UK supermarkets. Not just fruit and vegetables, but also cheese and other dairy products, fish and seafood. But as a country, we are famously bad at exporting. Others, like the Netherlands, currently do it more cheaply.”


He is vocal about the action he feels the UK Government needs to take. “At the moment, we are taking part in conversations with the Government on the trade deal being worked out with Thailand,” he said.


focus on kent


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