This week, Spain's agriculture minister Luis Planas stated that his country's fruit and vegetable exports to the UK have suffered “no fundamental disruption” from Brexit. Recent shortages of salad staples in British supermarkets were partly due to weather on southern Spain, he said. He added, “supply is guaranteed.”
The shortage, Planas said, was “an anomaly not a trend.” Brexit has introduced a raft of paperwork and compliance requirements that come at a cost, but Spain is keen to work within the changing trade environment with the UK.
Spain is the UK’s biggest single supplier of fresh vegetables with roughly €1 billion of Spanish produce imported every year since 2020, and Spain representing about 30 per cent of total EU production of fruit and vegetables.
Source: euroweeklynews.com