By Shannon Lennox

Business owners have been left in long term economic uncertainty after the Brexit deadline was pushed to January 31.

Business owners in Scotland are becoming increasingly worried about the livelihood of their businesses. Steve Burns from MBS INTER MAR LTD, exporters of live shellfish, shared his concern over post-Brexit trading:

“Disaster. Within the EU we sell perishable goods. Even with no document checks and no health checks, there’s just no time to waste. How on earth are we going to add in all those checks and still be able to do the job?  We just can’t. The politicians in Westminster, I’ve seen them rolling their eyes.  I’ll be getting phone calls to say ‘where’s the goods, the lorry is late, we need the goods now or it will miss the connection’ etc and that’s without any checks. Just the general problems of transport you might incur on any day. Add in all of this? Probably have to find a new business.”

Mr Burns also shared his thoughts on the new deadline: “The way we’re looking at it we’ll get one more Christmas out of it and deal with it in January and see what happens then.”

The temporary relief Mr Burns feels is a reminder of just how uncertain companies are on how to operate after Brexit. Despite this uncertainty, a spokeswoman from Business Gateway in Glasgow assured businesses: “We have a whole range of resources available for businesses at all stages to combat the uncertainty of Brexit. We have online resources and lots of events that are on-going. We would speak with businesses and discuss what extent they export or are relying on imports as part of their supply chain and tailor a solution for them.”