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Brexit worries but grounds for hope too, says Fargo survey

[ July 28, 2017   //   ]

Respondents to a survey by logistics software firm Fargo Systems painted a bleak picture of the effects of leaving the European Union – but there is also cautious optimism.  Many respondents believe that there will be little or no change to the continuing upward trend in global trade, despite the turbulence created from the post-Brexit fallout and a weakened currency.

Fargo Systems carried out the survey at this year’s Multimodal show. General manager Steve Collinssaid:  “We knew that the hot topic at Multimodal this year would be Brexit and its impact on the industry and we were curious to see how our customers and industry peers felt it would impact their individual businesses and the industry as a whole.”

While this information is usually obtained from conversations with customers, “This year, we felt that it would be good to take this one step further and do a survey,” he said.

It found that confidence has been somewhat dented by the UK’s planned departure from both the European Union and the European Customs Union, with only 18% believing that leaving the Europe will have a positive impact on their business and the industry as a whole. Nearly nine out of 10 respondents felt that leaving the European Customs Union will have a negative or neutral effect on their business with a mere 11% predicting a positive effect.

However, Fargo’s volume forecasts suggest that very few anticipate any significant changes to the continuing trend of global trade nor to customer spending behaviour, from a UK perspective at least, with 93% of respondents expect imports to remain the same or grow in the next 12 months

Only 17% of delegates questioned expect to see import volumes to drop over the next three years and 90% of those surveyed expect to see exports increase over the next year with nearly the same number of respondents expecting this growth to continue for the next three years.

(Click on the chart to enlarge.)

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