Events | IDM
Talking about the Single Market (from left): Antti Peltomäki, EU Commission, Wim Kloosterboer,
FrieslandCampina, and Gilles Morel, Mars and FDE (photo: IDM)
The Brexit is the biggest uncertainty that the EU dairy market has experienced so far,
agreed Michel Nalet, EDA and Lactalis, Prof. Roel Jongeneel, Wageningen University, and
Kasper Thormod Nielsen, Arla Foods (photo: IDM)
Brexit
The EU Single Market is of uppermost importance
to Arla Foods which calls itself a European
co-op. Two thirds of Arla’s sales are
generated in this area, said Kasper Thormod
Nielsen, Director for Global Trade Policy &
Regulation Affairs at Arla Foods amba. Arla
generates 15% of total sales and a third of
its European sales in the UK. 70% of Arla’s UK
business is made of local produce. The rest,
162,000 tons of product, is sent from Continental
Arla factories to Great Britain.
British MEP Daniel Dalton left no uncertainty
at the EDA forum, however: the Brexit will happen.
But the British government aims at keeping
markets together as much as possible and
pleas for a strategical partnership with the EU.
Ireland will be one of the biggest challenges for
Brexit negotiations. Dalton expects that the
border between the UK and Ireland will not be
a closed curtain, but closely monitored. Dalton
said it is very likely that the EU and the UK will
find transitional agreements on markets as
two years of Brexit negotiations just seem too
short a period for a constructive accord.
EDA has established a dedicated Brexit working
group because the association “is here to move
things”, as Nalet put it.