The Short Strait User Forum  

‍

After a frantic year across the UK and French borders post-Brexit, Unsworth and our partners have continued to search for ways to help ease the strain of moving goods for our clients.  

On the 5th of October, we hosted our first tour of the Calais Port, which brought together 57 British companies specialized in food transport (which represents about 10% of the freight volume passing through the port).  

This facility operates in a post-Brexit situation, where Great Britain lacks truck drivers (100,000 positions are to be filled) and where the cost of exports has increased by 40% over the last twelve months.  

Those in UK trade want to hear how to facilitate their flow UK to EU and EU to UK with ease. Whilst the Dover Calais straight is the obvious route, being the gateway to and from EU, we are now trying to take advantage of the facilities offered by Calais / Boulogne BCP and surrounding area.  We encourage as many traders as possible to join and take advantage of this forum. We will use it to access and ask questions to French customs and Sanitary officials, to check if there is storage space available in the area and anything further that can help facilitate frictionless trade.  

It is with this in mind that Unsworth and our partners launched the Short Strait User Forum with the goal of finding the best means of optimizing and therefore smoothing the passages from the United Kingdom to France, particularly in terms of customs and health controls.  

We are now encouraging our clients to join the forum and stay involved in the latest developments in UK and EU trade.  

The plan is to convene the forum every four weeks or so and address different themes around trade between France and England. The more experiences we share the better we will help ourselves.