UK suspends orange juice tariffs for two years

Last week, the British government announced the suspension of import tariffs on concentrated and non-concentrated juices. The measure will begin on January 01, 2023 and will last until December 31, 2024. The information was received by CitrusBR through the British Drinks Association (BSDA) and confirmed by the Brazilian embassy in London. According to calculations by CitrusBR, when considering the average of the last three harvests, the savings in the period will be at least US$5 million.

The work for the suspension was 100% designed by the CitrusBR team. "We knew that there would be a window to review a series of tariffs due to the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union and that there was a real chance of getting this exemption because there is no local orange juice production and it didn't make sense to penalize the consumer with a surcharge that only makes the product more expensive", explains the executive director of CitrusBR, Ibiapaba Netto.

Responsible for conducting the action, the director of institutional relations at CitrusBR, Tatiana Campos explains that in addition to economic data, information on the sustainability of the sector was provided to build the process. According to her, socio-environmental compliance was one of the criteria. Preservation areas related to orange orchards, pollinator management, among other topics were taken as arguments. “Sustainability was one of the criteria and in this regard the orange juice sector has a lot of positive information”. According to Netto, instead of making a formal request via the Brazilian government, the strategy was to contact representatives from the British Beverage Association who represent customers and who have a direct interest in greater competitiveness of the product. "Nevertheless, we have strong support from our embassy in London, which brought us important contributions throughout the action", she assesses.

Context

The British market is the third most important in Europe behind Germany and France and fourth most important when compared to the United States. According to the executive director of CitrusBR, the scenario is not better due to supply restrictions. "We are currently experiencing a period in which the supply of juice is very tight and we hope that this measure, which can be renewed, will reap good results over the next few years, further increasing the competitiveness of Brazilian orange juice", he says.