Only the best for Mother’s Day: In the wake of Brexit, customs is critical for your integrated supply chain

Maersk Customs Services ensures your temperature-controlled goods move through customs seamlessly, without any last-minute delays.

What Brexit changed for this popular Mother’s Day gift

For people across the UK who love celebrating their mum, Mother's Day is a great opportunity to shower her with gifts. However, there's one go-to gift that you might have to skip this year. Following the shortages around Valentine’s Day, there are concerns that one of the most popular Mother's Day presents – flowers – could cost more, or worse, may not be available.

This year, Mother’s Day demand for fresh blooms may pose a challenge as there has been increasing volatility in flower prices due to Brexit, along with inflated freight charges due to the ongoing global supply chain disruptions and spiralling energy costs.

Customs compliance for smooth border crossings

Certain product lines have attracted higher than normal delays since 1 January, which suggests that the new rules are causing significant friction for UK-based importers. To avoid unnecessary delays, disruptions at the border, or hampered deliveries, Maersk Customs Services helps you cut through the complexity of the customs clearance process.

Customs expertise: Since the acquisition of KGH in 2020, we have expanded our coverage and teams vastly across Europe. We have perishable experts on both sides of the border to ensure all documentation is handled with the utmost compliance for smooth clearances to be done speedily.

Manpower to match demand spike: In preparation for festive periods and special occasions, we ensure additional workforce to handle all clearances in time.

Internal synergies: Our UK teams have close alignment and cooperation with the teams in the Netherlands and coordinate on both sides of the border for seamless clearances.

The customer is one of the UK’s leading temperature-controlled logistics providers, specialising in floriculture and other fresh produce, and conducts daily deliveries to several major UK supermarkets. With multiple delivery locations situated across the southern and northern regions of the UK, completing all the required declarations for their goods as and when they are needed has become an increasingly laborious and manual process. Prior to Brexit, the customer did not face any issues with customs when sending their hauliers across the British border.

In the wake of Brexit, why is customs so critical for your integrated supply chain?

Cut flowers must be kept at a refrigerated temperature of around 4°C, with humidity levels maintained around 90% during their transportation. This helps avoid degradations such as the browning on petals and mould growth. However, even in refrigerated containers, the time in transport cannot exceed more than four days due to their fragility. Exporters face the challenge of keeping their produce fresh in transit to ensure they can reach their final destination on time. Utilising efficient logistical processes and avoiding long waiting times at customs is essential in preventing goods from perishing during transit.

Whilst flowers are gifted throughout the year, annual festivities create a significant surge in demand during peak seasons. This can cause issues in transit, as exporters deal with large fluctuations in shipments, at times exceeding 100 shipments a day. The customer was seeking to partner with a customs specialist who could ensure that they continued to operate post-Brexit, without tarnishing their standing. As the end of the Brexit transition period neared, the customer decided to start utilising Maersk Customs Services, provided by KGH, in preparation for the changes that would come into effect in 2021.

This was done as early as possible due to the peak season, ensuring that the cut flowers did not face unnecessary delays and perish whilst waiting to clear customs.

This foresight enabled KGH to handle over 100 customs inspections in the rush to deliver flowers in time for Mother's Day in the UK, with much of the produce being sent to a storage facility in Middlesbrough.

KGH was committed to tailoring their services, making sure the customer was able to satisfy the UK supermarkets’ surge in demand for cut flowers. With a specially created team, combining staff from the Netherlands and the UK, KGH adapted their offering to provide PEACH declarations for the first time. Their dedicated efforts ensured that all the declaration forms were completed over the weekend to guarantee all border crossings and customs checks in the UK were conducted efficiently.