The European Union remains a “critical” market for UK beef and dairy exports despite growing focus on alternative trade post-Brexit, the boss of the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board Nicholas Saphir has said.
Speaking with The Grocer at the AHDB Exports conference on Thursday, Saphir said it was “important to maintain the pressure on trade with Europe because we can’t just walk away from it”.
The government has been on an exports push with countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and China since the EU exit, which made trade with the bloc more onerous for most British businesses.
However, the EU remains the UK’s largest food and drink exports market, holding 58.6% of the share as of Q1 this year, FDF figures showed.
While overall exports to the EU significantly increased in the first quarter of 2023 (13.4%) compared with the same period last year as businesses adjusted to the added red tape, some key products have seen a slump recently.
These include British beef (–16%), pork (–22%) and cheese (–6%), which typically face some of the most rigorous checks at the European border.
“I think it will get easy, I think people are beginning to settle down and they’re beginning to learn how to deal with it,” the AHDB chairman said.
“Maintenance of trade with Europe is critical, we have long-standing businesses there so it’s still a principal outlook for us. We dealt with Europe as a local market and it isn’t a local market any more, so the key thing is you’ve actually got to be better at it.”
But a post-Brexit environment meant exporters also needed to “seek alternative market opportunities elsewhere”, he added.
Meat and dairy producers in particular are set to gain from the UK’s latest trans-Pacific trade deal, recent AHDB data showed.
British beef, lamb, and pork traders can expect to see exports increase by 60%, 26% and 23% respectively within the first year of trade with countries like Japan, Chile and Malaysia as part of the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) deal.
Imports, however, are set to face a swathe of bureaucratic requirements as the UK braces for the rollout of the new Border Target Operating Model, with new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and customs checks coming into place in October.
Additionally, some meat and dairy goods being moved from Britain to Northern Ireland will need new ‘not for EU’ labels from this October as well as part of the government’s Windsor Framework deal with the EU.
Saphir said the new layers of red tape would particularly affect small companies that could not absorb the added costs.
“It will be a very difficult two years,” he said, but added the general sentiment among traders was that ministers at Defra and the Department for Business & Trade were working to bring the industry together and drive trade.
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