Addmaster founder and CEO Paul Morris featured on Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme ‘Today’ to talk about Brexit.
Downing Street insisted last night that the UK will leave the customs union, the trade agreement in the European Union that allows companies to buy or sell without facing any barriers or tariffs.
With just over a year until the UK leaves the EU, this is a frustrating and difficult time for companies who are looking to plan ahead.
Based in Stafford, Addmaster is one such company that distributes products globally from the UK and has established itself as Europe’s leading supplier of additive technology.
As a recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade catrgory, the company has successfully pioneered to benefit from trade opportunities across Europe.
Along with other local business leaders, Addmaster CEO and founder Paul Morris spoke on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme to provide his insight on Brexit.
As a successful entrepreneur with a global company, Paul admits that the uncertainty of Brexit is not beneficial to UK businesses moving forward.
He said: “Politicians aren’t fully appreciating how harmful it can be to not understand the future, and most of the comments in the press are back biting from all parties on what they would do and why the other is wrong.
“How anyone can negotiate a good deal for the UK with this open lack of unity on our part beggars belief and just goes to show that they don’t understand how a business would negotiate in a similar situation to get the best deal.
“The next few years will be unnecessarily difficult as we have to have a minimum of three scenarios researched and ready to go, depending on the deal we get. From what I can see – none of which give any improvement.
“We don’t know if we will be better to stay just in the UK, relocate to the EU, or out of UK & EU altogether, or to have a new office in the EU so we can straddle both.
“Only a Brexitier would be naive enough to say we will have fewer laws – as any exporter knows that they will have to abide by all the international laws and any new UK ones. Even a business that only now sells to the UK market could be affected as their customer may still have to abide by EU law.”
Click here to listen to the Radio 4 article in full – 1:32:45