Possum Brexit Strategy Statement

Possum Brexit strategy statement (January 2019):

The comments below set out some of the issues and Possum’s approach to dealing with them in the event of a no deal Brexit.

Products:

Proprietary products:

Most of Possum’s products are proprietary designs manufactured by our sister company, Nortec Solutions Limited, in Warwickshire.
Potential problems of a no deal Brexit for proprietary products relate to the supply of electronic components used in their manufacture. These include:

a) Tariffs imposed after 29 March – we normally carry a minimum of 3 months stock of finished goods against forecast demand. Where appropriate this has been increased ahead of 29 March.

b) Delivery delays for electronic components due to increased custom clearance requirements and delays in the supply of components. Most electronic components are manufactured in China and shipped to the UK via distribution centres in the EU – for electronic components needed for future manufacture we have placed orders for 12 months’ supply which will be received into raw material stock at Nortec before 29 March.

Third party products:

Possum is also the exclusive UK reseller of a numbers of third party products from the EU and RoW.
Potential problems of no deal here are:

a) Tariffs imposed on the importation of EU goods – we have reviewed the WTO commodity codes which apply to the products we import and nearly all of them have an import duty of 0%.

b) Delivery delays at the border – where we source products directly from the EU we have placed orders for receipt prior to 29th March which we anticipate will provide a significant buffer stock in the event of any customs delays at the border.

Service

Possum Service and support is provided by directly employed Possum staff and we do not rely upon any non-UK nationals for the provision of the service, there are therefore no direct issues with a no deal Brexit in relation to Service provision.

Summary

We consider that with the reviews and contingency planning described above we have done everything possible to ensure that the supply of Possum products and service should be unaffected by Brexit. We will continue to monitor the situation and develop future plans as appropriate, to provide on-going support to our customers.