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Comment on Food price fears as Brexit import charges revealed

tal@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

There are a long list of concerns that I’d have about Brexit. This isn’t that high on the list, and I don’t think that it’s going to be that bad in terms of cost of living.

Small imports of products such as fish, salami, sausage, cheese and yoghurt will be subject to fees of up to £145 from 30 April, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

My guess is that the people getting whacked by this are basically stores that sell directly to consumers, probably more gourmet stuff. My guess is that that’s generally not the least-costly option. Like, instead of mail-ordering cheese from France, one can probably get it at a grocery store in the UK. The people getting whacked by this are people who care enough about a specific type of cheese to want to mail order it.

I know that The Guardian did a handful of interviews with a cheesemonger who was dealing with this going the other direction – selling small orders of gourmet cheese from the UK into the EU – and he was talking about how much of a problem this was going to be for him. googles Yeah, Cheshire Cheese. Anything that raises the transaction cost of crossing the border is gonna be bad news for people who do a lot of transactions. At the time, I was commenting on Reddit that what he should do is probably set up a distributor in the EU, then ship larger orders there, then ship from that distribution center to customers.

Following up, it looks like he did indeed do roughly that. Basically, he sold his company to a larger company, which had EU-based distribution:

theguardian.com/…/cheesemaker-sells-firm-to-overc…

Its new owner, fellow family-run north-west England producer Joseph Heler Cheese, has maintained a presence in the EU as a result of its larger operations and distribution hub in the Netherlands, which Spurrell hopes will make supplying European customers viable again.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It sucks, and it’s going to reduce choice on both sides of the English Channel, and increase costs. But I don’t think that it’s comparable to, for example, the problems that it creates for British-EU-spanning automakers, which rely on a just-in-time-based supply chain.

And don’t get me wrong. I’m – in the US – in the same boat as people in the UK who want their specific French cheeses. One of my favorite cheeses is Red Windsor, which isn’t something manufactured in the US, so if I want it, I have to order it from the UK and get whacked by US import tariffs, and despite efforts from the UK (including vigorously-Stilton-trade-agreement-advocating Liz Truss), the UK didn’t set up a cheese FTA with the US. At least with the TCA between the EU and UK, there aren’t any tariffs. What the article is talking about is just a processing fee for imports, and you can reduce the impact for anything for which there is sufficient demand and doesn’t need to be customized on a per-customer basis by importing in larger quantities.

But at the end of the day, I can suck it up, go order it from a distributor and pay the price. And I really don’t need a very specific brand of British cheese, even if I like it and would prefer to have it readily-available. It’s a luxury. It’s a luxury that I like, yes, but it can’t really be said that I’m experiencing hardship if I have to eat a different type of cheese.

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GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For me, the reason it sucks is that it plays into the hands of huge homogeneous businesses, while making life very difficult for companies supplying nice products in low volume, DTC.
Instead of me being able to order a kilo of nice stinky cheese from a french shop (or small UK shop), I either have to hope one of the supermarkets starts carrying it, or hop on the ferry and go to Super U myself.

(Honestly, I can see myself doing more day-trips to france at this rate! Good excuse to fill the boot of the car with produce, assuming exemptions are in place for personal use)

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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  or hop on the ferry and go to Super U myself.
  
  I mean, there there are going to be other costs that dominate in that case anyway (if someone’s going purely for the purpose of purchasing cheese), but if you’re personally carrying the thing, is cheese duty-free?
  
  googles
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop
  
  A duty-free shop (or store) is a retail outlet whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country, who will then pay duties and taxes in their destination country (depending on its personal exemption limits and tariff regime).
  
  Duty-free are abolished for intra-EU (inside the EU tax union) travelers but are retained for travelers whose final destination is outside the EU. They also sell to intra-EU travelers but with appropriate taxes.
  
  In 2021, with Brexit duty free are reintroduced in three British nations: England, Wales and Scotland. This allows reduced taxes on wine, Champagne or Prosecco, beer and spirits as well as on cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, or tobacco.[17]
  
  Hmm. Doesn’t really answer the question, as that’s not specific to the UK and the second bit is about people buying in the UK to take goods to the EU.
  
  looks further
  
  www.gov.uk/…/print
  
  You can bring some goods from abroad without having to pay UK tax or duty, if they’re either:
  
  for your own use
  
  you want to give them as a gift
  
  Allowance for other goods
  
  You can bring in other goods worth up to £390 (or up to £270 if you arrive by private plane or boat).
  
  Declaring goods made or produced in the EU
  
  You do not need to pay any tax or duties on personal goods you bring into Great Britain as long as they are within your personal allowances.
  
  looks up the price of a Dover-Calais round-trip ferry ticket
  
  About £190. I assume that that includes any cost of clearing customs, that there isn’t any additional fee.
  
  So my guess is that traveling to the EU in person – while an option – to obtain up to £390 in goods is probably, even excluding the time and other costs, going to be more expensive than ordering it, even with the processing fee being discussed in the article. But if someone’s going to be going to the EU anyway for some other reason and just picks up the cheese on the way back, it could pay off relative to having it shipped in.
  
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  - GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    In honesty, it’s also an excuse for a jolly.
    “Darling, we’re out of your favourite cheese, I guess it’s time for a long weekend on the continent.”
    French wine has always been a lot cheaper for comparable quality, anyone coming back from holiday with less than 4 boxes raises eyebrows!
    
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