Spanish berries

As negotiations between the European Commission and the British government enter the final straight, Fepex is to host a webinar on Thursday to analyse the impact of competition from third countries on Spanish fruit and vegetable exports to the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Fepex has calculated that Spanish exporters will have to pay €198m in tariffs every year if the two sides fail to reach agreement and the UK resorts to trading on WTO rules.

The webinar will set out what tariffs will have to be paid for each product, and where this would leave Spanish companies in relation to suppliers from non-EU countries which have bilateral trading agreements with the UK and are therefore not subjected to tariffs.

Speakers include Fepex’s managing director, Jose María Pozancos; Camino Arroyo, the Ministry of Agriculture’s deputy director general of fruit, vegetables and viticulture; and Ifema director Raúl Calleja.

It will be held, on Thursday, 29 October, between 10am and 11am at the Fruit Attraction LIVEConnect Platform.
The UK is the third biggest importer of Spanish fruit and vegetables. In the first half of 2020 it imported €1.16bn of produce, an increase of 9 per cent on the year-earlier period.

For the whole of 2019 Spain exported 1.5m tonnes of fruit and vegetables worth €1.779bn, an increase of 5 per cent in volume and 1 per cent in value compared with the previous year.

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