More Brexit woes?
The UK’s largest milk producer will warn that a hard Brexit could see prices soar on items such as milk, cheese and cream. This could happen if a transition agreement is not forged to save imports and exports from World Trade Organisation tariffs of 36pc once the UK leaves the EU.
Arla Foods, the co-operative owned by 12,000 farmers across seven European countries is set to release a Centre for Economics and Business Research study.
This will show that its UK business has a total economic footprint of £6bn a year in gross value added, it can also be associated with a total of 119,000 jobs.
Tomas Pietrangeli, managing director for Arla UK, said: “The biggest risk we see is not having free movement of goods, which we think will have significant consequences not only for Arla but for the total dairy industry.”
“If we move into a hard Brexit and there is no transitional agreement in place, that would have potentially bigger implications than those just for us as a company. It is generally a low-margin business so 36pc tariffs pretty much closes exports and imports. If you look at dairy exports and imports in the UK, there is a deficit of 25pc.”
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