The potential implications around Brexit weighs heavy on the minds of many executives in the dairy industry at the moment. The answers have been the subject matter of many business conferences over the last number of months. No easy answers are forthcoming as the exact nature of the question is not crystal clear as we don’t know what the detail might yet include. If you were to summarise some of the thoughts from many of the conferences they might look like the following:

  • How Brexit ready is your region at a macroeconomic level (policy, trade) and supply chain level?
  • How Brexit ready is your individual business?
  • Have you done a sensitivity analysis of your business? If prices dropped 15% and costs increased 10% how would business look? Need to be proactive – cannot wait for others to answer.
  • Is cross border trade for each product code known? – What volumes are sold domestically, ROI, EU, non-EU? Are policy makers in your region aware of this so they can support you?
  • What would happen if there was no deal? SMP tariff (€1,254/t); cheese (€1,671/t) – prepare for the worst but strive for the best outcome.
  • In Northern Ireland over £1 billion worth of trade occurs in milk and milk products. Of that about 14% is exported out of Northern Ireland to the Republic (See Fig 1). A further 26% is traded out of the EU.