“The question now is simple – what length of extension can be mutually acceptable to both the EU and the UK? If the EU pushes a hard line on a long extension rather than, it fears, a series of requests for short extensions, is that something which Theresa May can push through Cabinet, and Parliament? No Deal seems unlikely but still eminently possible in the current febrile atmosphere.”
Chris Parker, Director of Capacity & Commercial Performance, Eastern Channel, on Friday 5 April.
If you are not among the lucky recipients of Chris Parker’s brilliant weekly analyses of the politics of Brexit, you can get a taste of it above in this conclusion from his most recent contribution.
That Chris Parker is following the situation more closely than most is understandable. He is capacity and performance director for our Channel routes – and they will be more affected by Brexit than any other ferry route.
“If we were unprepared for Brexit, DFDS, travellers and hauliers, businesses and tourism on both sides of the Channel would suffer under it. In this situation I am extremely grateful for all the work, energy and commitment we see among our colleagues in the Channel and central Brexit teams helping us prepare for it. I am equally grateful for the commitment we see among customs authorities, ports and trade associations to work with us to find solutions that will mitigate the consequences. All this gives me confidence in our ability to solve many of the challenges a hard Brexit would present us if the attempts to postpone it should fail,” says Kasper Moos, Head of BU Channel.
Preparations include the below.
Finding solutions with customs
We have had a series of meetings with French customs that has fostered a very good solution. The French customs authorities will get the customs clearance documents for all trucks boarding in Dover so they can use the crossing time to inspect documents. Via an information board in the drivers’ lounge, trucks’ number plates will be listed in red for the trucks which customs want to inspect at arrival. All other trucks, listed in green, will be able to continue their journey after arrival without further inspection.
“This is a brilliant solution which will greatly reduce the risk of long waiting times if the trucks have the documentation in place when they arrive at the terminal. Jean Aubert, his team and not least Stephanie Thomas deserve huge credit for their cooperation with customs about this, as do Sean Potter, Jenny Daker and the DIO team for having prepared our systems, and aligned processes, including Phoenix, My Freight, API connection to Authorities, EDI, and 3rd party software along with IT / Digital development to handle this,” says Kasper.
BU Channel and French customs have agreed to test the system again with real trucks on Monday.
Training of staff in port operations where Jesper Christensen’s and Sebastien Douvry’s staff will be the first to meet customers on arrival and to check whether documents have been completed and guide the customers. Port operation colleagues have also done a great job preparing Dunkerque for handling more trucks waiting and for customs controls.
HR preparations
“The impact of Brexit will be felt not just by our customers but by our staff, and our HR departments have been working hard to support all of our colleagues and to ensure continuity of our services”.
Informing passengers and cargo customers.
“Philipp Päper has done a great job coordinating our passenger Brexit preparations, and BU Group Passenger, with support from Digital, have been preparing our digital sales platform to communicate with our passengers about new requirements. Wayne Bullen and his team have been extremely busy informing and coordinating with all our freight customers.
IT systems
A huge amount of work is ongoing to adapt our IT systems to the new requirements, including for communicating with customs systems in all countries, port systems and customers’ systems.
Are we ready?
“We are as prepared as we can be. However, despite all preparations and communications to our customers, there is still a risk that some of our customers won’t be ready with the required export and import declarations from day one. Therefore, we expect that there will be disruption to the operations in the early days so we have allocated additional staff and management to secure the contact to all relevant stakeholders to be able to react promptly to potential disruptions.”

Kasper Moos, Vice President & Head of BU Channel