Tag: Future Processing

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. For Future Processing, there are three main concerns about a hard Brexit. First, the likelihood that the pound will plummet, creating currency risk. Vladimir Vano, a Bratislava-based analyst and member of the British Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia, estimated that a hard Brexit would lead to a 1% lower GDP for both Slovakia and the Czech Republic, due to trade disruption and increased bureaucracy, with further indirect impact likely as well. “We are on different edges of the EU geographically, but Britain has gone from zero to be the in the top five or six trade partners for Slovakia and the Czech Republic,” he said. Britain is in the group’s top three markets, but she said the company’s contractors were already looking to shift business from Britain to central Europe or Germany to avoid potential Brexit hurdles. As well as exporters, the tourism sector across the region could also be hit by a potential fall in the pound or a Brexit-related economic slowdown. For most businesses in the region with exposure to the British market, there remains a hope that the worst will not happen, but as each week goes by, the worry increases. Granat admitted to a frustration with British politicians’ failure to agree on a deal and the hopeless Westminster infighting. 170,000 Jobs in central and eastern Europe connected to food exports to UK.