When Belgian customs boss Kristian Vanderwaeren suggested in March that exporters in his country take a ‘Brexitpauze’ – basically stopping shipments to the UK until the dust settles on Brexit – it underlined a feeling that the level of uncertainty had reached a tipping point.
Fortunately for the flow of fresh produce between the two historical trading partners, fruit and vegetable companies don’t seem to have taken much notice, and publicly at least are insisting that Britain remains as vital a destination for their products as ever.
There’s certainly plenty of incentive to keep product moving. The UK is Belgium’s fourth-largest trading partner, with over €31 billion of exports and €16bn of imports annually, while the UK in turn relies on Belgium for a wide range of fresh produce, most notably salad and vegetable lines.
Maarten Verhaegen, divisional sales manager at BelOrta, says that the UK is a very important and indeed growing market for his company, which has picked up a couple of extra British customers in the last year alone. “It’s difficult to prepare for Brexit because nobody knows what is happening,” he says, “but we are up-to-date with which documents we will need and so on. We don’t yet know what the extra costs will be, but the UK will still need fresh produce after Brexit.”
FPJ has reported on how the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is preparing for Brexit, and it’s a similar case at Antwerp, which handled 17 million tonnes of cargo headed to the UK – it’s second-largest market – last year. Following the referendum result in 2016, port authorities established a Brexit task force with some of the port’s concessions, Belgian customs and other stakeholders undertaking an impact analysis to identify the potential risks to business.
The port has held numerous meetings with politicians and other EU and UK delegations, as well as taking an active role in lobbying local, federal and European government, according to Justin Atkin, the Port of Antwerp’s UK & Ireland representative. Atkin’s role itself was set up specifically to engage on the topic and build a network of contacts, promoting the port and its facilities in the UK.
“We have engaged with shippers in Belgium and the UK, including holding two UK roadshows in Birmingham and London,” Atkin explains. “These were attended by a diverse audience of shippers, shipping lines, ports, freight forwarders, importers and exporters who we were able to inform about the advantages of Port of Antwerp as a gateway to and from Europe and the rest of the world.”
Further outlining the challenges faced by Belgian shippers, Atkin says: “Should there be an increased level of administration and physical checks then this could add delays to cargo passing through the ports on both sides. The impact of this would be especially felt by accompanied transport using the traditional RoRo services. Because of our inland location there are no RoRo services operating between Antwerp and the UK, and so the impact of such delays would be less felt.”
Atkin points out that there is estimated to be a shortage of more than 40,000 truck drivers in the UK, a figure that is likely to increase as a result of Brexit. That is already causing problems for shippers moving cargo to or from ports, and is leading port operators to predict that there will be a modal shift from accompanied to unaccompanied transport including bulk shipments and containers. “This creates opportunities for the Port of Antwerp, where our location 80km closer to the main EU areas of production and consumption is an advantage,” he says.
While admitting that Brexit uncertainty has inevitably meant that importers and exporters in both the EU and UK will be looking at different markets, Atkin still expects there to be strong trade relations between the two sides.
It’s in everybody’s interests that that is the case.
BelOrta's fresh approach
At a production level, many Belgians feel their edge over Dutch rivals can come from offering value-added or differentiated products, and there are some interesting developments taking place in the way fresh produce is grown too.
On tomatoes BelOrta’s growers have expanded their production area by five per cent in the past year, and the company now sells as many as 40 different varieties – up from just four 15 years ago – with every type of flavour and colour accounted for. Ruby Red, an on-the-vine plum tomato with dark red flesh and higher Brix content, has been particularly well received in the UK, according to the company’s Maarten Verhaegen.
Some of the most notable changes are occurring in lettuce, where BelOrta has been investing heavily in hydroponic production. While costing ten times as much to establish production, according to Verhaegen, the fact you can grow more in a smaller area, combined with the fact that much fewer or no chemicals are needed at a time when the number of actives available to growers is ever shrinking, makes it a good bet for the future. Verhaegen goes further: “We will do more with hydroponics in future. I think in five to ten years time it will be the only possible way to grow lettuce in Belgium.”
Smaller veg, rich in flavour and reducing waste, is another trend noted by BelOrta, with Verhaegen pointing to broccolini and courgettini as a particular growth area.
