2023-12-28 13:04:10
Starting next January 31, all goods of animal or plant origin entering the United Kingdom must be accompanied by a sanitary and phytosanitary certificate required by the country.
This new regulation fully affects the businesswoman Encina Barragán, based in London, who is dedicated to importing Spanish sausages to the United Kingdom.
“It’s going to be total chaos because more documents are needed, these documents have a cost, especially here in the United Kingdom, and they have already raised our rates by 5% more from the start, something that they have not done in Spain, and then That will increase the delays because getting all these types of documents requires time, we are talking about maybe one more week,” he tells RFI.
These health certificates, which are divided into four categories, must be completed 48 hours before they arrive at the border so that British officials have time to check them.
“Like everything that is new, I don’t know if the staff here in the Kingdom will be prepared and if they will have the appropriate training to know how to manage this new type of documents and know how to put them into the system.”
This new regulation comes into force three years after Brexit and is yet another twist for British companies. Encina Barragán is Spanish, she arrived in the United Kingdom 32 years ago and eight years ago she created her company, which is called The Ojos Food. Brexit was a huge blow to her business.
“It has affected us a lot because just before we were exporting to France and other countries in the European Union and once Brexit was implemented we had to stop exporting to all these countries. I think this has been a mistake because before we had a cake with 28 pieces and now we only have a small cake with only one piece. The power of expansion and growth not only of my business but of any other business (after Brexit) is very limited,” explains the businesswoman.
The product imported by Barragán most affected is canned fish, whose costs have doubled since Brexit.
“For fish you need a lot of certificates. Then the puzzle cannot be finished, as I say, until the merchandise has been collected and the transport is already prepared for it to come to the United Kingdom. And you also need to give the registration number and nationality of the transport. All this leads to incredible delays,” she laments.
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