Protectionism | Brexit Red Tape Damages Yet Another Successful British Exporter

Yet more evidence of the damaging impact that Brexit is having on UK businesses that previously enjoyed high levels of sales to customers in the EU.

Guardian Business reports here on bicycle entrepreneur Andrew Lang who says Brexit has left his company with a £100,000 shortfall in revenues.

He accuses the UK government of not doing enough to mitigate Brexit's impact on small exporters.

Lang's business is Cycloc, which makes indoor bicycle storage and accessories. Sales to customers in the EU represented 50% of its business before Brexit caused a 25% decline in overall sales.

Cycloc has tried to avoid Brexit red tape by opening a warehouse in the Netherlands but it still cost £10,000 extra in fixed costs.

By 2022 it became apparent that EU consumer sales were “not going to recover to their pre-Brexit levels", so the warehouse is to close and the sales are lost.

Multiple Cycloc's experience amongst small UK exporters by hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

It's not hard to see why the loss of free trade to the EU is so damaging to so many small businesses who had worked tirelessly to build their export trade to Europe.