Britain’s ink supplies could run dry and paper stocks vanish within weeks in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a major trade association has warned.
Printing chemicals and wood pulp are among the products manufacturers fear could be held up at ports amid a disorderly EU exit, Make UK, which represents manufacturers, said.
The organisation’s policy chief told a conference in central London that major commercial printers feared the particular process of the ink trade would be halted by a no-deal Brexit.
“We will fast run out of ink in the case of a hard Brexit,” Tim Thomas told the Immigration Industry Association event.
“We have plenty of members who print things in the UK, huge printing presses, and through speaking to them it is just quite revealing what Brexit will mean,” he said.
“The ink, most of it we don’t produce in the UK, basically it comes from Germany and there is an ink cycle.
“It comes from Germany, we print, and there’s a by-product that goes back to Germany, we get a trade discount, and then import the ink [again].”
Paper would be affected too, he said. “... Most of it comes from outside the UK, about 80% of it.
“So stockpiling paper at the moment might be a good thing to do. Most of our members who are stockpiling are [doing so] for around four weeks or so. After four weeks, we sort of run dry.”
Another trade body, the British Coatings Federation, said its members in the print trade have been building around four and six weeks worth of stocks to stave off any immediate supply problems.
The federation’s Tom Bowtell told HuffPost UK: “Whether it is importing or printing inks we need to keep the wheels turning on the industry.
“If there’s a no-deal we will face a six and a half percent tariff on our raw materials, if our members are making ink in the UK.
“More than half of printing is done for packaging. Think of food packaging, like oven chips – that’s printing ink. That’s another whole supply chain there.
“The biggest problem we have in the longer term is that if we leave without a deal we leave the EU Chemicals Agency.
“If we have a hard Brexit the UK will create its own replica agency and will mean double the cost as we have to register them twice. Inevitably, these costs will pass through the supply chain.”
Meanwhile, devaluation of the pound, Bowtell added, would increase the cost of raw materials.
He said his meetings with government suggested that, with a deal, Britain could become a so-called associated member of bodies like the EU Chemicals Agency, removing the double cost jeopardy for manufacturers.
“If we get a deal we would be reasonably comfortable that we would be in a good place. If we have no deal, it would be a worst-case scenario,” he said.
And it’s not just ink and paper that could be impacted by no-deal. Stephen Clarke, the chief executive of WHSmith, told the same conference the business was stockpiling stationery imported from the far east.
“We have, across our business, been gradually building our stocks of products we think there might be some vulnerabilities if there were problems at the port,” Clarke said.
“The issue we’ve been trying to avoid is the ports getting closed and to make sure we have the cover that won’t be disrupted. We’re fortunate when compared to other retailers,” he said.
It comes after it was reported that a potential delay to Brexit could happen after Theresa May told EU officials she may need to seek extra time to secure a deal and stave off a hard exit.
And on Friday, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab accused the European Union of behaving dishonourably in negotiations by attempting to use the Irish border issue to keep Britain tied to many of its laws.