This morning i received an update of Paul Christian
"January 2021: The UK has left the EU. We don’t want to lose our many EU customers and friends however major changes and price rises are inevitable I am sorry.
With the departure of the UK from the EU, a raft of regulations and restrictions have been imposed, causing a massive increase in inspections, paperwork, bureaucracy and office time spent filling in forms. Sadly this and the essential extra “export” cleaning of the bulbs, has had a huge impact on costs.
All of our parcels entering the EU will now require a phytosanitary certificate (PC). These will be supplied with EU orders. They cost over £25 per PC. There is also an additional cost to us of over £250 per hour to actually have the plants inspected and get the PCs issued. We have averaged this out to £10 per PC. The cost of all of this is included within our despatch charges. We will pool and combine inspections of orders, to keep costs as low as we can. However despatch may sometimes need to be delayed a little, while we accumulate enough orders to be able to pool them for inspection.
In the face of postal losses we have also amended our postal rates and we will now ONLY send packets by “International tracked and signed-for” services. This is also included within our new despatch charge.
Costs are calculated as a % of order value and they are advised before payment is made. However as a guide, the minimum cost of export cleaning, health certificates, documentation, signed & trackable post, packers time and materials and customs declarations is now £52.00 per shipment. We have pegged the maximum at £99.00.
CITES plants will no longer be sent to the EU.
Our bulbs and plants are sent by air letter post, carefully packed. Packaging is in paper bags or polythene bags using coco-peat or new wood shavings, according to the needs of the plants and the restrictions on packing materials in force at the time."
This will be the case for all exporting nurseries, Ireland will may be the solution as a gate to continentals customers?
I guess several nurseries will ship plants without any phyto, at risk or using a forwarder that'll cover the risk at cost.
At work we import foods and plants (ferns and fruits trees) for several customers, one already asked us to bypass the UK phyto with an irish company, the first batches were reaffected to other plants categories. Will many other traders follow?
https://www.euronews.com/2021/01/01/ireland-to-bypass-post-brexit-britain-with-more-direct-sea-routes-to-europe
