Brexit has not halted trade between Italia and the UK. Exports set to reach 27 billion by 2025

“Ten years on from the referendum, the real lesson for Italian businesses is not how much the UK has changed, but how much we have changed in the way we engage with it,” observes Roberto Costa, president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the United Kingdom, which forms part of the network of 86 Italian Chambers of Commerce abroad, members of Assocamerestero. The Chamber works every day to ensure that this complexity becomes a competitive advantage, not an obstacle.”

The first disruption experienced by businesses, Costa adds, was ‘psychological rather than customs-related’. Even during the transition phase, many Italian SMEs, particularly in the food & beverage and textile sectors, adopted a wait-and-see approach, suspending or slowing down expansion projects that were already at an advanced stage. The main factor weighing heavily was the increase in bureaucracy, particularly in certain sectors, such as the food industry. In particular, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force in January 2021, introduced rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary barriers, a doubling of customs formalities, and the fragmentation of logistics chains. These have resulted in additional costs and workload that less well-organised SMEs have been unable (or unwilling) to cope with, to the extent that many have abandoned the UK market or reduced their presence to occasional operations, according to the London Chamber of Commerce.

Larger companies found it easier to overcome these problems, although they certainly faced their share of difficulties. “For our sector, the most significant impacts have been in the areas of administration and the workforce,” explains Enzo Lamberti, CEO of LDH (La Doria), a subsidiary of the La Doria Group in the UK which operates there as an importer and distributor. “However, this country remains one of our group’s key overseas markets, as demonstrated by the significant investments made to build a new logistics hub, which was inaugurated in 2020.”

Marco Zerboni, co-owner with Giulio Temporin of Up on the Tables – which imports and distributes tableware throughout the UK but also acts as an agent for several Italian food brands – was more critical: ‘Brexit has been a disaster for the hospitality industry: transport costs have doubled, delivery times have lengthened, there’s a labour shortage and British consumers’ purchasing power has fallen. We’re doing well, but it’s a country that’s unrecognisable compared to the one I knew when I arrived here in the late 1990s and decided to make it my home.”

President Costa, however, sees the glass as half full: ‘Trade volumes have remained stable and, in recent years, we have seen the United Kingdom moving closer to the European Union. I don’t think there can be a reversal of Brexit, but there are some openings, such as the possibility of removing phytosanitary certificates for foodstuffs – which will be discussed over the summer – and the UK’s return to the Erasmus programme from 2027.”