View From Europe


By Colin Ley


Slow recovery in prospect for 2021 Often in business, it’s the need to react to rapid change which presents the biggest challenge as owners and managers struggle to keep pace with new developments, an unexpected shift in customer demand or the impact of a natural disaster. As we embark on 2021, however, it’s the slowness of change which is putting our industry under the most pressure. For all the relief being felt in response to the arrival of an expanding


clutch of vaccines against Covid-19, coupled with the last-minute agreement of a Brexit deal between the EU and the UK, the reality of the new year is that 2021 has all the hallmarks of becoming an extremely slow-moving 12 months. Add to this, the stubborn refusal of US President Donald Trump to accept defeat, two months after losing to Joe Biden by seven million votes in total and by 306 to 232 in terms of the all-important electoral college, and the craziness of 2020 just keeps going. The big hope on the Covid-19 front is that with careful controls


from now on, supported by an efficient and effective global vaccination programme, we can begin to head back towards some form of personal and business normality. While it would be good to think we could reach such a position by the mid-year point, a more realistic view is that we’ll need most of the next 12 months to achieve anything close to where we were before this nightmare began. As such, businesses will almost certainly need to maintain high level social distancing for key office and plant staff well into the long term, with many others continuing to work from home for the foreseeable future.


Brexit deal – at last! On Brexit, the result we all expected would be dragged out of the negotiators at one minute to midnight was duly achieved and then predictably welcomed by all concerned. Whether or not the deal itself is actually worth the paper it’s written on is another matter, given that key issues such as the highly contentious management of EU/UK fishing rights is set to become a rolling political battle, to be passed from one UK Prime Minister and European Commission President to the next. Arguably, the greatest business positive to emerge from the Brexit


deal is that industry leaders can now get on with the task of making the new system work, freed from the public angst of politicians, far too many of whom have risen to unjustified prominence on the back of four-and-a-half years of UK/EU disruption. The business community was always confident about coping with whatever emerged in late December, especially once the negotiators moved aside, leaving the ‘workers’ to get on with the job. I particularly liked the pre-Christmas statement issued by


PAGE 12 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 FEED COMPOUNDER


ForFarmers, declaring that the company was equally well prepared for a deal or no-deal conclusion. “Like all other businesses, the uncertainties of Brexit have


presented a significant challenge and we feel we have put in place, so far as it is possible, the required protocols and actions to enable the business to operate as near to normal throughout the transition period,” said the company. “Supported by our UK Senior Management team, we have a


Brexit Team who have been working closely together in monitoring developments to ensure all areas of the business and our supply to yours are not adversely impacted from 1 January 2021 and beyond. “We know there will be challenges and we are prepared and ready


to face those and to support our customers in their endeavours to do the same. Together we will feed the nation as we have done for many years and will continue to do so for many more to come.”


Bumpy ride That is not to say the next few months will now lack difficulty or challenge. In reality, kicking the new order into shape will be demanding, probably extremely demanding. As some early January headlines have already revealed, we should be ready to face the business equivalent of airline passengers being told their December 2020 documents are no longer valid for travel between the UK and Spain. Even if the politicians all agree and the relevant embassy staff tell you it will all work fine, there will always be some interesting interpretations floating around at border points.


UK Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove, a leading pro-Brexit voice


throughout the withdrawal operation, celebrated the newly agreed deal by telling the BBC that there will be ‘bumpy moments’ for UK businesses and travellers as they get to grips with new EU rules. Not surprisingly, many companies decided to avoid testing these


new export/import bumps during the first couple of weeks of January, concluding that hold-ups (to use a polite term) will be inevitable. The big test will come, therefore, when pre-deal stockpiles start to shrink, and transport managers find themselves with no option but to expose their preparations to UK and EU border officials. Looking at the same bumpy prospects from the EU side is


somewhat different to what UK managers will face, as evidenced by the Dutch bicycle part firm, Dutch Bike Bits, which has said it would no longer ship products to the UK, due to the new Brexit measures. The Belgium-based Beer On Web operation also revealed that it would now be shunning the UK ‘due to the Brexit measures’. Two tiny examples of EU businesses deciding that Mr Gove’s Brexit bumps aren’t worth the effort, not when plenty of other sales options exist. All this Brexit adjustment would be tough enough without the added


complications imposed by Covid-19. As we saw during the final days of 2020, the UK/EU border can be shut in an instance in response to a sudden rise in infection levels, trapping full and empty vehicles alike in a massive lorry park, formerly known as the county of Kent. As I suggested at the beginning of this piece, it’s looking like a long, slow year for us all.


Comment section is sponsored by Compound Feed Engineering Ltd www.cfegroup.com


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