Record shipping costs are hurting the ability of British companies to export outside the European Union, dampening one of the apparent benefits of Brexit, a leading consultancy has warned.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research said that long-haul shipping costs had almost tripled compared with pre-pandemic levels because of higher fuel and container costs, surging demand for goods and port disruption caused by the war in Ukraine. In the United States, the Biden administration has gone to war with companies that control the Pacific shipping sector, accusing them of raising prices by 1,000 per cent and of stoking inflation.
The CEBR research found that short-haul shipping costs for British businesses to countries such as Germany had gone from about 3.5 per cent of the
