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They went out of their way to help” he said, “but each conversation took about 45 minutes and you don’t get that on a helpline.” “I cannot be critical of anything in Dublin port. Last Wednesday Summerton spent the day before in Dublin port to see the procedures for himself with a high street supermarket boss trying to get five lorries containing dairy and other chilled and frozen food released from the port. They were given the all clear after it was clarified that the drumsticks were not chicken but Swizzels sweets and the eggs were Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Summerton has two lorries delayed in Dublin because of the words “drumsticks” and “eggs” appeared in the paperwork. Photograph: Paul Mcerlane/The Guardianįor McCulla, Brexit has been a double whammy with the Holyhead-Dublin port-Northern Ireland route also now snarled by the red tape facing all GB loads. With a population of just 1.9 million, supplies are always going to be sent in mixed loads, or groupage, meaning entire lorry loads are at risk if one supplier gets one item wrong.īack at the new “customs” office Summerton has set up to deal with the protocol, the operations team have decided if they can’t get the last bit of data for the carrots the only option will be return them to the supplier, freeing the lorry to continue its journey to Belfast.Ī red seal secures a container door as final preparation for departure. Overnight the company has been forced to turn itself into to “a data cleaning centre” as it cajoles and sometimes rows with customers to convince them of the new data they have to provide for goods going to NI. “He’s allowed in just like that because he has come from the EU to the EU, but we can’t get goods in from GB,” says Summerton. Martel Ten Dam left the Hook of Holland the day before, drove across England to Holyhead and cleared Dublin port “in five minutes” dropping off in Dundalk, Newry and Belfast before reaching McCulla’s in Lisburn.
#CARROT WEATHER POLITICS DRIVERS#
As drivers fill trailers with a vast array of pallets carrying everything from meatballs to vegan ready meals and halloumi cheese for supermarkets shelves, a Dutch driver rolls in with a delivery of frozen chicken.
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Out in the yard the issues he faces are plain to see. “Remember we are a haulage company,” says Summerton repeatedly as he talks of the regular spanners he has to remove from the haulage works. Paperwork now needed for a consignment of mixed fish ordered for Belfast. Another 14 staff have been taken on to help with customs. Such is the dizzying array of new data that suppliers need to provide for transport across the Irish Sea that McCulla has devised its own “triage” crib sheet with a team of six new staff taking customers through a check list of 39 data fields to ensure flow of goods across the Irish Sea.
#CARROT WEATHER POLITICS CODE#
Under the Northern Ireland protocol, which was designed to obviate the need for infrastructure on the Irish border, all goods passing from GB to NI are subject to the EU customs code with sanitary and phyto sanitary (SPS) checks applied to 100% of food entering the region.īut Summerton says: “The only thing the Northern Ireland protocol (NIP) protects is the single market.” Half a day at his yard and offices is to lift the lid on the complexities Brexit and checks down the Irish Sea have brought to many businesses in Northern Ireland. “It’s absolutely criminal what has been allowed to happen between these two islands that have traded with each other for so long,” says Peter Summerton, managing director of McCulla Refrigerated Transport, one of Northern Ireland’s biggest frozen and chilled food specialist haulage firms. I’ve got one more issue to go,” says the visibly stressed operations man simultaneously dealing with a sheaf of about 30 documents for another order of mixed fish stuck in England. “It took half a day yesterday for me to clear the supply chain. A simple key stroke mistake could be difference between the lorry getting the red or the green light for entry to NI. Then there was also the supplier who had provided a commodity code that was two digits short. Photograph: Paul Mcerlane/The GuardianĪnother supplier on the lorry had been struggling with the documentation requiring it to supply what is known as an “inco term”, which determines who pays the duty in any tariff but also establishes a specific record as to who is the importer. Shipping documents are stored in a secure storage tube.