20 September 2018

Brexit support for businesses in Northern Ireland

InterTradeIreland, the island of Ireland trade and business development body, is offering support and advice to firms to help their preparations for Brexit. Much of this is available on their website here (and a useful resource for any business).

Business in the island of Ireland may qualify for additional advice and support – and, to help qualifying companies start to prepare for Brexit, InterTradeIreland are offering 100% financial support up to £2,000/€2,250 (inclusive of VAT) towards professional advice in relation to Brexit matters. This support can help your business get advice on specific issues such as movement of labour, goods, services and currency management.

If your company is based on the island of Ireland, is an SME with 250 employees or less and has a turnover less than €50m (£ equivalent); then you might qualify for the Start to Plan vouchers. View the InterTradeIreland website for further details here.

InterTradeIreland have also trawled through the possible World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariffs that may apply to the movement of goods that your business may use or produce. Their tariff checker is available to view and search here.

WTO Trade Tariffs

According to the InterTradeIreland tariff checker, the tariff for the main consumable import for printing and packaging companies (paper and board) is 0%. Most printed products are also 0% (with the exception of playing cards - 2.7%). However, printing inks have a 6.5% tariff and most printing machinery a 1.7% tariff.

The pdf download below (Trade Tariffs Printing and Printed Packaging) contains the extracted information for many product codes relevant to the Printing and Printed Packaging industry. However, you may wish to examine the tariffs on further inputs to your business (whether you import them or your supplier imports them). You may also be interested in checking whether or not there are tariffs in place for any products that your clients import or export.

Of course, please be aware that there may also be non-trade barriers (measures like border controls, country of origin checks, differences in regulations over things like product standards and safety, and threats of anti-dumping duties) to be mindful of. Such barriers could still be particularly relevant to Northern Irish companies trading to the UK – as currently Northern Ireland to Dublin and the ferry across to Holyhead is a popular logistics route. Click here to read what the Institute for Government has to say about non-tariff barriers.