Shipping delays and costs

Shame on you Doug - and if you ever let SWMBO know you are in trouble forever!

Re: border poll - if and when it happens no matter what the result, does not change the current situation which is a real shambles.

Border Referendum? .

No hard border? I see the Guarda have road blocks checking car registration and red/green diesel use.

Hi JimmieS,

I had to double check before commenting on this.

So far, having used Royal Mail, DPD road and DHL Road services into Northern Ireland, we have found movement to be as usual, subject to U.K. VAT rules, without requiring any special documentation, as long as goods are destined to be used in Northern Ireland. Parcels are getting through without any headache so far. We also have a small pallet consignment going to a business in Northern Ireland next week, for goods to be used by them for their business activity in Northern Ireland. So far, we have not been asked for any special documentation/paperwork or costs other than what we normally pay.

Perhaps the problems start for movement from Northern Ireland to Ireland?

Ketan at ARC

There's a lot of "gameing the system" around the Irish Border, always been like that

VAT is a favourite, and fuel excise duty

HMRC used to allow 100% relief for protection money to the bad guys on each side, no receipts of course

The last I read about it they were still on our old 1970s rateable valuation system for rates, the government were too scared to change a system that everyone accepted and still paid up

The politics of history mean no-one is putting border posts up anytime soon either

It's fab if you're one of the little people, proper unhindered free movement.

Not so easy for bigger companies though, who have to follow any rules and regulations

The border area itself is truly beautiful, it's stayed that way because everyone is too scared to build anything there, but you can see why it's called the emerald isle, and it's amazing

The rest of the routes south are almost non stop roadside bungalows from the building boom

Edited By Ady1 on 22/01/2021 16:54:14

I've just imported some tooling from Germany that DHL picked up on Friday 15 Jan @ 12:31, it arrived in the UK @ 16:55 on Tuesday 19 Jan and was delivered to me @ 13:49 on Wednesday 20th Jan by Parcel Force. The supplier told me there may be delays in Germany due to heavy snow, all in all not bad for standard shipping.

 

 

Edited By Henry Brown on 22/01/2021 21:03:19

Hi Ketan

From the UK Government website

There will be some changes for goods movements into Northern Ireland from Great Britain. The UK as a whole will leave the EU’s customs union and Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK’s customs territory. The UK Government has established a free service, the Trader Support Service (TSS). It will be able to help all traders, regardless of size and at no additional cost, to move their goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I suspect the Government’s idea of ‘some changes’ is totally different to those in the haulage industry when they have gone to the bother to set up the TSS.

You may know that DPD, and probably other carriers, now require ‘any parcels destined for Northern Ireland to include the same data as for EU destinations. You will need to supply information for the import declaration which is a requirement of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a fundamental part of the withdrawal agreement.’ This requirement is certainly a new one.

So NI is in the UK customs territory but has to be treated as an EU destination! You could not make it up.

Me thinks there is an awful lot of small print in the withdrawal agreement which has still to emerge.

PS Apologies if this post appears twice - I have no idea why.

Had a phone call today from an old colleague based in Shanghai who I used to work with out there, he was asking about the availability of the vaccine in the UK. He is in lockdown working from home (funny, nothing on the news about this), also Nanjing and other local cities in the area have been locked down. He was saying they have a very bad recurrence of Covid, despite missing the worst of the early epidemic last February. Factories there are handicapped with shortages of every conceivable component, castings, pressings, raw sheet metal, electronics, you name it they have a shortage. The latest wave is rumoured to be as bad as ever with ever younger people contracting the virus. He thinks CNY will be cancelled.

Interesting point about the container situation is that the current 'container index' in Shanghai is 0.24, where 0.5 means there are containers available for every request, but no spares. Index less than 0.5 means there is a container shortage and a figure of 0.25 indicates there are 2 requests for every 1 container. Indices higher than 0.5 represent a surfeit of containers for every request, such that 0.75 indicates 2 containers available for every request. He was saying the 'forward index' shows the figure not reaching 0.5 until July at the very earliest.

Looks like this pestilence will continue for the foreseeable future.

On a lighter note, a mate of mine had a DPD delivery by an Electric Van yesterday. He asked the driver what he though of it and he said it was great.

Not wishing to hijack Ketan's information thread, but this relevant article appeared on the BBC News Site Today

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55740063

Bill

Edited By peak4 on 22/01/2021 23:48:10

Ketan, I can't add anything sensible to this thread but I do feel for anyone who's business is reliant on foreign manufacture etc. I can't see things improving for quite some time.....

Matt

The impact on industry looks to a major headache.

one of my roles is ordering tooling at work, one way or another this is from overseas and has gone from 1-2 days too 1-3 weeks!

Same story with materials, 1 month has turned into 2-3 months! (surprising how much is not made here now)

The knock-on effect of this will be far reaching and inevitably end up with higher inflation.

As a previous poster said, I glad I have a very well equipped workshop!

Jim

If you get rid of your core industrial base and your merchant navy and you live on an island then the chickens are bound to come home to roost eventually

In this case all the chickens are arriving at the same time

so we're pretty clucked for a few months at the very least

Friend of mine in the shipping business has just made the following comments on the China container situation.

"We are estimating sometime between June and August for things to settle down..
Up to around August last year rates were $1500-$1700 and now $12-$14k port depending. Also have Pearl season surcharge of $900 and port congestion fees of $350-$550 line depending on top.
I expect the “new normal” rate will settle somewhere around the $3500-$5000 mark when it does eventually settle down."