A British wine wholesaler, which last year criticized Brexit as the biggest threat to its business in 30 years, has decided to leave the UK after post-Brexit paperwork left it with a £150,000 hole in revenue.
Daniel Lambert, who supplies Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and 300 independent retailers, is moving to Montpellier in France later this week with his wife and two teenage children.
There he would set up a French company to export back to his own company in Wales.
He said the only way he could get around the “incredibly complicated” paperwork for importing alcohol was to set up a French company to export to the UK and handle the EU administration himself.
“I’m doing what the government has suggested, which is to have a company here and in Europe to mitigate the impact of Brexit,” he said. “What I’m doing will allow me to import and export to and from the EU within the company itself, so we mitigate any costs of importing into the UK.”
Daniel Lambert Wines imports more than 2 million bottles of wine a year and has seen business boom during the pandemic, with revenue rising by around £500,000 as locked-out consumers replace pub visits with home deliveries.
But the end of the Brexit transition deal in January ate into any profits, with red tape costing his company “between £100,000 and £150,000”, he said.
His Twitter posts on the Brexit regulations have enjoyed a lively following among fellow businessmen as he was one of the first to agree to the 200 pages of documents per shipment.
“In just a week I will finally be leaving Brexitland for good. Let me know if anyone ever finds these sunlit heights. I don’t expect an answer anytime soon,” he posted last week.
In just one week, I will finally be leaving Brexitland for good. Let me know if anyone ever finds these sunlit heights. I don’t expect an answer anytime soon.
— Daniel Lambert (Guilts). (@DanielLambert29) July 22, 2022
Before Brexit, transporting wine across the Channel was relatively easy.
Post-Brexit this has become a nightmare with carriers fleeing the sector due to the complexity of the additional paperwork. All imported goods must be accompanied by documents with a detailed code of the goods and other information such as the origin and destination of the cargo.
But importing wine requires specialized expertise. To begin with, each type of wine has an individual commodity code depending on the grape variety, the type of wine, the alcohol content, the size of the package in which it is imported and whether it has a protected designation of origin.
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According to the government website, there are 361 different goods in the wine category alone. A pallet consists of different wine crates, each of which will attract additional charges.
Lambert said this has proved a huge deterrent for logistics firms as the number of carriers already willing to transport alcohol has dwindled from “hundreds” to just “four or five”, allowing brokers to charge up to £400 per shipment.
“The premiums now being paid to carry alcohol, especially across the border, are quite incredible. Brokers have found themselves doing pretty much whatever they like in terms of billing because so few are willing to do it,” he said.
By setting up a company in France, Lambert will be able to obtain a French Economic Operator Registration Number (EORI) required for exports to the UK, in addition to the UK EORI, which he maintains with his UK import company.
For Lambert, it is complicated but the only way he can continue to trade in Britain after Brexit, as it will allow him to export and import legally while cutting out the middleman who charges up to £150,000 a year for paperwork.
“It’s absolutely incredible that in the 21st century people are effectively banned from importing from Europe unless they pay the brokers a lot of money,” he said.
He described the UK government’s claims that Brexit was done as “stupid” because many small and medium-sized businesses could not cope with the trade barriers that now exist for anyone trading with Europe.
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