Brexit will increase food supply chain costs, warn business groups

Brexit will increase food supply chain costs, warn business groups

Publishedduration36 minutes ago

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Brexit red tape is likely to increase food supply chain costs, the Food and Drink Federation has warned.

Chief executive Ian Wright told MPs that there will be short and long-term costs to "re-engineering" supply chains.

The British Retail Consortium warned of further possible shortages of some products in Northern Ireland supermarkets.

And manufacturers were concerned that Brexit bureaucracy will push up costs.

There will be extra food supply chain costs due to more paperwork, Mr Wright told MPs on the Future Relationship with the European Union Committee on Wednesday.

"Unless the deal changes in some material way, we're going to see the re-engineering of almost all the EU-UK and GB-NI supply chains over the next six to nine months," Mr Wright said.

"In the short term there will be costs and time wasted for supply to reach the shelves, and in the long term will be costs and changes, and fairly significant changes, to the way in which manufacturers in the UK and in the EU interact when they are producing product," he said.

Mr Wright criticised the bureaucracy that his members are now facing when trying to export from the UK to the EU.

He used the example of one company