LEO Prepare Your Business for Customs programme is helping small businesses put their best foot forward for Brexit

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Dr Suraya Diaz knows it’s better to be proactive than reactive. When it comes to wellness, prevention is better than cure. When it comes to business, it’s all about preparation. For Brexit, it means signing up for a Local Enterprise Office Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop.

That’s exactly what the Galway based health store owner and maker of organic food, cosmetics and wellness products did. Indeed, Brexit is the reason the Portuguese woman moved to Ireland to start a business in the first place.

She had studied biochemistry and biology in Portugal and completed a master’s degree in clinical microbiology before moving to the UK to do a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology where she studied infectious diseases.

“I wanted to understand the mechanics of infection,” she explains. “But I also always wanted to start a business.”

At around the time she finished her PhD, talk in the UK was turning to a Brexit referendum. That prompted a move to Galway, where she worked as a researcher, studied nutrition, herbal medicine, naturopathy and homeopathy and set up a practice helping to promote wellness in others.

When she couldn’t find products with the exact blend of ingredients she needed for her clients, she decided to make them herself. She developed a range of certified organic products, opening a small manufacturing facility in 2019, which she expanded in 2020 with assistance from Local Enterprise Office Galway.

Today her products sell online and via health food stores and pharmacies.

“The Local Enterprise Office has been very helpful and I have availed of various different courses and vouchers.

As well as providing me with grants for machinery and marketing, it enabled me to employ my first member of staff. I am also doing a Lean for Micro course which is very important in helping to improve efficiencies,” says Suraya.

She has also benefited from a number of LEO business mentors. “Sometimes, when you are starting a business, you can be so focused on the thing that you are doing now that it can be hard to see the whole business in its totality. Mentors really helped me with that. They gave me a new perspective and made me question things.”

Participating in Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers programme, Phase I and II, helped too. “It’s a very comprehensive programme and I’d definitely recommend it. I had a background in biochemistry, nutrition, naturopathy and herbal medicine but I didn’t have a business background.”

In order to be fully Brexit ready, she signed up for the Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop.

Being Brexit Ready

“Because I was already aware of Brexit, I had tried to limit my UK suppliers as much as possible from the start. As a result, the majority of my suppliers are not in the UK,” she points out.

But with the UK accounting for 70% of her sales, ensuring UK exports are as seamless as possible is vital.

“I am trying to go to other markets as well including Spain, the Netherlands and Germany but the reason my exports grew in the UK so much was because of Amazon. With Covid-19, many more UK people were at home and, when a shortage of stock emerged from their usual suppliers they started looking for an alternative, and it was an opportunity for me,” she explains.

But the more she sold into the UK, the more important it was to make sure she was Brexit-ready.

“I did the Local Enterprise Office Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop because I wanted to be informed and I wanted a good overview of what was ahead of me.

I also wanted to understand things like INCOTERMS. The lecturers were very informative and, at the end of the session it was very interesting to hear what the other businesses were saying and doing too.”

In terms of tariffs, regulations and possible trade restrictions, there is still a lot of uncertainty, she points out.

“The biggest challenge is that we don’t know exactly what is coming or how expensive it will be. However, because

I did the LEO Prepare Your Business for Customs programme, I know I have done all the right things, like registering for my EORI (Economic Operators Registration and Identification) number. I know the things I need to look out for and it gave me the tools I need to talk to a customs broker.”

As a result, whatever happens after midnight on December 31st, when the UK finally leaves the EU, Dr Suraya Diaz is ready for it. “I am a positive person anyway, but I think I will be okay. Although we will all feel the impact of Brexit, at the same time I think it will open many doors to us.

There are so many customers out there in Europe who are currently buying from the UK. Those UK businesses might struggle to deliver in Europe,” she says. “Ireland can find some very important opportunities there. I’m hopeful I can take advantage of that.”

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How a LEO Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop helped Triskell Seafood get ready for Brexit

Use the Brexit Readiness Checker to review your firm’s preparedness 

Marie-Aude Danguy, Triskell Seafood

1st January is a red-letter day for businesses all over Ireland. It’s the date Brexit becomes a reality and the UK leaves the EU.

Staff at Sligo based Triskell Seafood are all set to manage the changes it will bring to customs procedures, thanks to participation in a Prepare Your Business for Customs, a dedicated customs workshop offered by Local Enterprise Offices.

Triskell Seafood was set up by French woman Marie-Aude Danguy, a native of Brittany who came to Ireland in the 1990s as part of the Erasmus student exchange programme and loved it so much she never left.

She had marketing and language skills which she put to work helping local oyster growers to access new markets in France, initially working from home.

Today her business is based in a business park in Collooney and has expanded its services significantly.

“We started off trading oysters and then saw a gap in the market to provide the equipment that growers required, such as oyster bags, oil skins, trestles and seed,” explains Brona Galvin, Triskell Seafood’s Office Manager.

Exporting oysters and importing kit meant it needed to get to grips with new customs arrangements likely to be introduced on foot of Brexit.

“Our customers are expediteurs (traders) in France, the Netherlands and the UK, who supply their local market. We are the middlemen between the expediteurs and the growers, so a huge amount of what we do is about logistics and marketing,” she says.

“But we also supply oyster seed, equipment and clothing, as well as presentation packaging like wooden boxes, to growers here in Ireland and abroad.”

Brona, who has a finance background, knew it was vital to put the right systems and processes in place to ensure the business could continue to trade in and through the UK, and remain fully compliant.

That meant talking to logistics partners in Ireland, on the Continent, and in the UK, to make sure they were Brexit ready too. A particular concern for her was the onward transfer of goods via the UK landbridge, and what implications it might have in terms of cost, paperwork and possible delays.

“When Local Enterprise Office Sligo advertised a Prepare Your Business for Customs course, we had to do it,” she says.

“We wanted to gain a broad knowledge of what we needed to do and how to do it. I wanted to know how to structure our Brexit plans, and how to liaise with haulage partners on it, whether to do clearances in house or through customs agents, and, if the latter, how to deal with customs agents.”

Getting it wrong is simply not an option. “If you don’t fill in the forms correctly online, you could hold up a whole truck, with everyone else’s goods on board. Oysters being exported, and oyster seed imported, are live and have a short window in which they can survive out of water,” she explains

Questions Answered

The Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop answered all her questions – and more.

“It was very helpful and fascinating to hear from the other participants as well. Some of them were manufacturers who make goods, send them across the border to Northern Ireland for amending, and then bring them back. They were really worried about what customs would mean for them. It made me think thank goodness we’re selling oysters!”

Some of Triskell Seafood’s growers live in Northern Ireland, so she needed to find out about the implications for them however.

“Other concerns I had were in relation to commodity codes. If you are importing an oyster knife, for example, and the handle is plastic, but the blade is steel, how do you decide which is the more significant component?”

The company applied for its EORI number, and registered for UK VAT.

“The workshop provided great reassurance in that it showed us we had a lot of the information required in our systems already. That helped us get ready to talk to customs agents.”

Completing the workshop enabled the company to make all the preparations it required. “In the end it wasn’t as daunting as I had feared it would be. I had been worried there would be different commodity codes in different countries but they’re the same. If I hadn’t done the Prepare your Business for Customs workshop, it would have been a lot more scary.”

Over the years Triskell Seafood has benefited from a wide range of Local Enterprise Office supports, she says, including financial ones such as Business

Expansion and Technical Assistance grants, and productivity and innovation supports, such as its Lean for Micro programme and social media marketing training. It has also benefited from mentoring.

“The LEOs have been very good to Triskell Seafood and our sister company Triskell Pro,” says Brona. “We get great support from them and we avail of all the grants and support they offer, to help us grow our business.”

She recommends any business that still needs to assess the impact of Brexit to sign up now for a customs workshop.

“It’s about knowing you’ve done what you need to do, to prepare. In our case, we’ll be back shipping oysters from 2nd January, and we’ve stocked up our imports as much as possible to give a comfort zone from 1st January,” she says.

“We also know all the customs related questions to ask of our clients. We have the knowledge we need and we wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for the LEOs. I’m much more confident now.”

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Being able to turn to its Local Enterprise Office for help with customs training has been of enormous benefit to Wicklow technology company Hubbcat.

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Simon Smith (CFO Hubbcat)

As well as looking to develop export sales, the communications equipment company imports kit from –

and through – the UK. Indeed, the business had an international aspect to it even before it was founded, in late 2019. That’s because the team behind it spent many years working together in the Caribbean, in the telecoms sector. Chief Financial Officer Simon Smith met friends and co-founders Alan Bates and Damian Blackburn while he was on a consulting assignment in the Bahamas.

“Alan, who is from Greystones in Co. Wicklow, always wanted to come back to Ireland to start a business,” explains Simon.

The founders had spotted a gap in the market for ‘push to talk’ (PTT) communications solutions. It allows for devices that combine walkie talkie technology with mobile phones, a better value alternative that allows people to talk instantly via the Internet.

Whether there are 10 or 100 people who need to communicate instantly, PTT can facilitate that. It works regardless of whether they are in different parts of a factory, or different parts of the globe.

Hubbcat’s first office was over a mechanic’s workshop near Greystones, Co. Wicklow. It wasn’t ideal. “We’d have to run downstairs and ask the guys if they could stop working while we pitched for business,” he laughs.

Despite the challenges this posed, one of its first wins was a major one – to supply a Covid-19 solution to

the Government of the Bahamas. Hubbcat’s solution allows visitors to the country to be monitored as they quarantine, with app-based geofencing that emits an alarm if a person quarantining breaks the rules.

The wider applications for PTT technology are simply enormous, he points out. “It’s a one size fits all communications system for workforces. They can use it as an app that sits on top of their mobile phones or via a custom device, which we supply too,” he explains.

Among its most compelling use cases are hospitality and events management, where large numbers of staff often need to keep in constant contact in a cost effective and reliable manner.

Because of the pandemic however the founders have focused first on facilities management, helping personnel to keep one another safe as they move around large and possibly empty buildings. Hubbcat can provide security and peace of mind with a ‘man down’ alert that combines a panic button with geolocation.

Local Enterprise Office the first step for exports – and imports

One of the founders’ first ports of call when setting up the business was Local Enterprise Office Wicklow which provided it with a Priming Grant, a Trading Online Voucher and mentoring.

As Hubbcat grew it moved into a local enterprise park – away from noisy car repairs – and expanded its customer base by moving into sectors such as pharmaceutical manufacturing and international food retail.

It doesn’t just export its solutions overseas, it also imports equipment, including PTT devices, from a range of countries. This includes items that are either sourced from the UK or sourced elsewhere, but which travel through the UK to get here.

It’s for that reason that Simon signed up for the Local Enterprise Office’s Prepare Your Business for Customs workshop which, because of Covid, took place online, in three two-hour sessions. “We are pitching for business in Northern Ireland and the UK so we needed to understand how new customs arrangements post-Brexit would impact on that,” he says.

The company is currently focusing on selling to facilities management companies in Ireland which are major international businesses, such as Brinks, Bidvest Noonan and Mitie.

“These are global operators. If we can grow our customer base here in Ireland with some of these global companies, we can get recommendations from them to help us grow internationally. To do that, we need to know about customs,” he explains.

The Prepare your Business for Customs programme answered all his questions. “It was really good, really detailed and the expert trainer who gave the workshop was really insightful. There are an awful lot of rules and regulations involved but the workshop helped me to get to grips with them, both in terms of software and of bringing in physical goods.”

Although Hubbcat already has experience exporting to the Bahamas, “UK and EU customs are completely different,” he points out. “The workshop explained about duty and International Commercial Terms (INCOTERMS) and outlined some of the risks and things to look out for, as well as where to go for help.”

It was highly interactive, he says, so that all participants were able to find the specific answers to questions they had about their own business.

“It’s good to know too that, in the Local Enterprise Office, I have a support network, somewhere I can go to if I’ve queries in the future.”

Use the Brexit Readiness Checker to review your firm’s preparedness