Bureaucracy, paperwork, delays and confusion arising from the post-Brexit trade arrangements with the EU have left Scottish salmon producers counting the cost.
According to the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation (SSPO), the trade body for the sector, Scotland’s salmon farmers have incurred losses of at least £11 million as a direct result of the changes brought about by Brexit.
The SSPO figures show the losses are a result of the extra paperwork, the new layers of bureaucracy, the delays and the confusion caused by the end of the Brexit transition phase.
Since January 1 2021, when the UK left the Brexit transition phase and exporters had to deal with the full effects of not being in the European single market, salmon farmers have experienced considerable delays, some of which have resulted in lost orders, failed deliveries, unharvested fish and heavily discounted products at market.
The sector has experienced an immediate loss of sales to the tune of 1,500 tonnes of product.
Scotland’s salmon farmers prepared extensively for the changes and allocated additional resources to maintain the smooth and efficient supply process it previously enjoyed.
Scottish salmon farmers have also had no choice but to delay harvesting 700 tonnes of fish in order to minimise any of their high-quality product becoming spoiled or destroyed.
The sector has experienced various increasing costs which are unrelated to production, amounting to £200,000 in January alone. Such overheads are the cumulative result of additional export documents and resources, logistics costs, administrative and veterinary costs, and through lost custom as a result of reduce confidence in the supply timeline.
Mr Scott said: “This cannot be the ‘new normal’. Our members cannot guarantee reliable delivery times to the European Union, which is our biggest overseas market. The systems need to be streamlined and a lighter touch adopted on all sides to make sure we can continue to serve our European customers as we have in the past. If not, they will go elsewhere and we will lose both trade and customers.
“We are calling on both the UK and Scottish governments to work together with us and with the supply chain to make sure there are no more blockages in the system which prevent our members from getting their fish to market on time.â€
The post-Brexit losses follow a tough year for Scotland's salmon farmers after the impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic saw export sales fall by £168 million.
Figures released by HMRC for January, stated that just 86 tonnes of Scottish salmon had been exported to Europe. Official EU Eurostat import figures put the figure at 4,500 tonnes, while Scottish salmon producers say they exported close to 5,000 tonnes of fish in January 2021.
The Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation (SSPO) says there is an urgent need for irregularities in post-Brexit HMRC export figures to be addressed in order for the full impact of Brexit to be known.
Giving evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee on 22 April, Hamish Macdonell, SSPO’s director of strategic engagement, told MPs there was a real issue over the validity of the export statistics that had been put out by the UK Government.
Speaking outside the committee, he said: "Scotland's salmon producers sent about 5,000 tonnes of salmon to Europe in January. The Eurostat system which records how much Scottish salmon went into the EU records about 4,500 tonnes arriving there.
"Yet according to the official HMRC figures published on behalf of the UK Government, we only exported 80 tonnes, which is only about three per cent of the amount that actually went there.
"There has been a big problem, at the very least in January in terms of the collation of the figures. Something happened, to do with the way the figures were collected, and we don’t know who is to blame or where the problem has come from. But unless we can get a really proper baseline of how much fish is actually going into Europe it is impossible to tell what the impact of Brexit is."
Responding to the issue highlighted by the SSPO, the Under Secretary of State for Scotland, David Duguid MP, assured the Committee that: “There is an investigation ongoing and the HMRC are looking into where that discrepancy has come from.†■