Jaros?aw Granat has worked for Future Processing since it was a scrappy startup run from the first floor of its founder’s house in the southern Polish city of Gliwice. Now the software development company has more than 1,000 employees based in a gleaming office complex and serves dozens of blue-chip clients around the world.
More than half of the company’s clients are in the UK, and Granat fears that two decades of hard work building up the business could now be put at risk by the looming threat of a no-deal Brexit.
“We don’t know how Brexit will look and it could be chaos,” he said. “Very few people, including us, believe that no-deal will happen. But maybe we’re just wishing it won’t.”
The company, which started life when its CEO, Jaros?aw Czaja, was a computer science student at Gliwice’s Silesian University of Technology, now has annual revenue of nearly PLN100m (£20m). The overwhelming majority of employees are still based in Gliwice but many travel regularly to Britain.
Just as for many British businesses, the most crippling aspect of the ongoing Brexit negotiations for the companies in central and eastern Europe with major links to Britain is the complete lack of any certainty. Many had assumed that a no-deal Brexit was an impossibility, but with two months to go their faith that a workable deal will be agreed on by all sides and passed through parliament is beginning to be tested.
For Future Processing, there are three main concerns about a hard Brexit. First, the likelihood that the pound will plummet, creating currency risk. Second, that transport connections between Poland and the UK will be disrupted, making it harder for the Polish company’s representatives to visit British clients. Finally, that the UK breaking away from EU law will create legal uncertainty and potential additional costs as the Polish and British systems diverge.
“We understand that people in the UK and politicians might not have considered the implications a few years ago, but the consequences could be drastic,” said Granat.
While making preparations is tricky when nobody knows what kind of Brexit to expect, Future Processing has already made attempts to diversify its client base and thus reduce…
