Tomorrow will be the first day of real post #Brexit food trading - I hope it goes really well and confidence builds quickly - thousands of businesses and millions of jobs are relying on strong continuity 1/

If it does it will be testament to the millions of hours of preparation by #foodindustry and government professionals - undertaken in the middle of an unprecedented economic and social crisis and with massive blind spots on what would be required only them until the end 2/

We won’t know tomorrow - this week - or even this month - how robust that preparation has been. As the period pre-Christmas showed us - border flow is a complex organism, dependent on lots of decisions and actions - that is a good thing, bringing resilience to #supplychains 3/

The main decision most import/export businesses took in the past three months was to de-risk the movement of goods through the Dover/Calais border - bringing movement forward, or delaying orders - Some have rerouted via other entry ports used more unaccompanied freight. 4/

Logistics companies have de-risked too - a common approach has been to focus on the ‘must move’ - most important customers - reducing the amount of drivers and assets that risk being tied up - if that goes well they will ramp back up 5/

There has been lots of preparation based on the risk of ‘unaware traders’ turning up at border oblivious to new requirements and causing hold ups - that feels less likely - businesses appear to have been successfully scared away from that 6/

Certainly logistics service companies (hauliers, ferry companies) are acting as a key deterrent to oblivious non-compliance - ‘no paperwork no movement’ - this is not ideal no one wants to turn away custom because of fears over preparedness - this dynamic must change fast 7/

Success from here is not just smooth border flow - but maintaining trade volumes - and the key to that will be confidence - maintaining it wherever possible and where it has been / will be lost - rebuilding it 8/

My hope for 2021 that the #brexit grandstanding period is over - if ‘getting brexit done’ means anything hopefully it means a period out of the spotlight - focused on bedding down new systems, renewing commercial relationships and delivering effective pragmatic compliance 9/

As the agenda moves on @ColdChainFed will stay with this - on hand to help our members cope with the ongoing challenges and pressing for the clarifications and fixes that we still need - however ‘done’ our leaders think we are - we know the real work is just beginning end/