But even with a free trade agreement, there is still a lot of homework to be done for exporters to the UK.

Let’s go back: at the end of October 2019, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson concluded a withdrawal agreement with the EU and on January 31, 2020, the UK officially left the EU.

At least on paper, because in practice it is still business as usual as a one-year transitional period is foreseen for the EU and the UK to reach a free trade agreement to avoid a hard Brexit.

Only the conversations did not go very smoothly.

Two stumbling blocks

The EU and the UK have not yet reached an agreement because of:

1. Fish. The British want to limit access to their territorial waters, while the EU wants free access as it is today.
2. Competition. The British want unrestricted access to the EU market. That is possible, says the EU, but only if the goods meet our strict environmental, labor or state aid standards. And that goes against the idea of British national sovereignty.

But even if a miracle were to happen and a hard Brexit is avoided, hard nuts would still be left to crack for European exporters to the UK.

British volatility

To be prepared for Brexit, many exporters have calculated the financial impact of this on their business. The import tariffs that the UK would levy as of 2021 were an important parameter in this respect.

However, a new decision by the British government is throwing a wrench in the works: instead of the 85 to 90% of EU goods previously exempt from import duties, a new list recently emerged in which significantly fewer goods are exempt.

Thought of sales tax yet?

Free trade agreement or not: exporters to the UK will have to pay an import VAT. Depending on the Incoterms used, they will have to act as a VAT consignee in the UK and have a UK VAT number.

Physical controls, pre-registration, and customs declarations

Supposing that the UK and the EU reach an extensive trade deal over the next few months, this will not yet include all internal market concepts as we know them within the EU.

Think of the mutual recognitions, the principle of origin, and harmonization. Moreover, a free trade agreement does not mean that there will be no more customs formalities or controls.

Quite the contrary.

The British government recently announced a phased introduction of controls with a six-month transitional period to accommodate customs formalities and debts.

Are you ready for the excisable goods?

Despite a free trade agreement, EU rules on excisable goods will no longer apply in the UK as of January 1, 2021. Payment for excisable goods transported within the EU is deferred until the goods are sold to the end user.

As of next year, these goods, in transport to and from the UK, will become ordinary import and export goods to which an EMCS (Excise Movement Control System) message no longer applies.

British declarants will also no longer be able to register in SEED (System for Exchange of Excise Data) and will no longer be able to create an e-AD (electronic administrative document).

Only Northern Ireland remains: thanks to the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, freight transport between the EU and Northern Ireland will remain under EU rules until 2025.

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Because our TRIS Cloud solution (in cooperation with our technology partner Oracle) is comparable to Fort Knox. It has to be if the CIA is one of your customers.

Tony Vertenten, Intris CTO: “Oracle simply cannot afford to be hacked. They’ve invested huge amounts in security and our customers can benefit from that.

The Oracle Cloud has it all: the servers, access to the internet, and all of the security. And everything is of a very high quality, the cream of the crop.

The physical security is also impressive: they have three separate data centers that are located at least 100 kilometers apart and are set up as bunkers. Moreover, every part of the machine exists in triplicate.

As far as access control is concerned, the highest level of security is the standard there. All entrances are isolated and closed and everything is very closely monitored.”

What if my competitor is inside that Cloud too? Can he/she access my data?

Tony Vertenten: “That’s impossible. Oracle encrypts everything as soon as it’s stored in the Cloud. The keys to decipher this are managed by Oracle itself and trust me, they have incredibly tight security.

Plus, Intris opted to provide every customer with a separate Cloud environment. One customer’s Cloud is completely separate from another customer’s Cloud. They each have their own virtual machine and database; nothing is shared.

Such a fortress must cost a fortune…

Tony Vertenten: “That’s correct, Oracle has invested a lot in this and still does: in hardware, in security, in knowledge and expertise, although our customers don’t have to pay for that.

An Oracle Cloud subscription is one of the cheaper ones of its kind. Especially considering what’s included.

People also often forget the extra costs of a server on premise. Not only is a machine like that outdated after 5 years, you also have the maintenance costs, the people who have to monitor it, and so on…

An Oracle Cloud ‘machine’ is constantly being renewed without any extra cost to the customer.”

SO

TRIS Cloud is synonymous with:

• Very secure
• Always up to date
• Excellent price/quality ratio

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To make sure that all these flows run flawlessly, more than ever the key lies in advanced, but at the same time rock-solid, ICT applications. “If you want to get it right, even in the logistics sector there is no way other than solutions that start from the workflow,” says Patrick Van De Looverbosch, CEO of Antwerp-based specialist Intris.

“Especially because of its small margins, the development and maintenance of software for the logistics sector is far from easy,” explains Patrick Van De Looverbosch.

His company Intris, short for International Transport Information System, has been serving this market for 25 years with digital solutions that improve administration efficiency along the different links of the logistics chain.

Customs agents, shipping and line agents, transporters, large shippers, and especially forwarders call on the Antwerp market leader in its sector.

“With my experience in the transport and customs world, Intris has focused on platform-independent software from the outset. This way, we have avoided having to spend too much time on adjustments when updating those platforms, which has also allowed us to pay more attention to the features of our products. This allowed us to quickly establish ourselves firmly in the market,” says the business manager.

“Our focus on forwarding companies instigated our further development into an integrated logistics service provider. We developed an initial software solution that allowed our customers’ business systems to communicate with their customers’ or third parties’ business systems.”

Since an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) such as this responds to the processes between packages, it allows for fast switching. “Because it keeps you, as a developer, from having to adapt the underlying packages to the client’s needs over and over again. This innovative step made an initial acceleration happen,” he states.

Workflow Defining

With sophisticated solutions tailored to the workflow, Intris took the next innovative step about ten years ago. “While this approach was already well embedded in the industrial sector for example, it was slower to gain ground in the logistics world. Even if mapping out the business processes also makes it clear to a logistics company which steps it no longer needs to take.

Those are often only taken because people are so used to them that they no longer wonder if there is any other way. Even though the margins in the sector are under considerable pressure. At the same time, customers of logistics players wish to have an up-to-date overview of stocks and want documents and invoices to be processed automatically. It is impossible to achieve this without a clear workflow. That’s why this is the best way of working for us today,” Patrick Van De Looverbosch stresses.

“The concept of a customs package is simple in itself. But the constantly changing context creates a more complex story.”

With customs to him being the beating heart of logistics, it was obvious that Intris was initially going to focus its developments on that. The challenges in this are the changes in regulations and features that frequently need to be integrated into the software package.

“The concept of a customs package is simple in itself: you deliver something, then you receive a document. But the constantly changing context, such as trade restrictions, creates a more complex story. Under no circumstances should our customers bear the brunt of this. If they have a maintenance contract with us, we will keep them up to date without an additional fee.

Incidentally, with Michel Van Giel, we have had a former director of customs in our ranks for several years now. He assists our 45 employees with the conversion of those customs rules into our packages. His expertise also helps us to assess perfectly whether questions from customers fit within the legal framework,” the CEO points out.

Brexit Proof by Australian Alliance

Since the spring of 2018, Intris has formed part of the Australian WiseTech Global Group, which is already number 1 in the same segment in America and Australia. “In terms of philosophy and approach, we were already on the same line, so this alliance was a logical next step.

Looking at the future, the collaboration with a financially powerful group allows us to keep shifting gears and developing at the pace that the market demands,” says Patrick Van De Looverbosch. The international connection also helped Intris to work out solutions for Brexit, whatever the outcome will be.

Reliable across the board

In addition, the obtained certificate of Authorized Economic Operator proves that customs considers Intris to be a reliable partner in cross-border trade. It is a company that, for that matter, has established itself throughout the entire logistics chain, because over the years it has also developed cloud applications for communication with customs services, declaration of hazardous cargo, warehouse management, tax representation, and more.

“With Squid we now offer customers a user-friendly integration and communication platform to quickly connect with both government and private platforms. For example, we have already joined NxtPort and RX/SeaPort for the Antwerp and Zeebrugge ports respectively, and integrations with the Rotterdam Portbase platform are also possible.

We didn’t pick the name Squid by chance; it was chosen because of all of [our] tentacles reaching far and wide,” explains Patrick Van De Looverbosch.

“With a quarter of a century of experience, we can rely on architecture and components to be able to respond proactively to new situations. For example, after installation and configuration, a new customer can quickly plug into any part of the full package he finds appealing.”

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“This is the logical next step for Intris, as we are currently transforming our operations and technologies to better support the market and our customers, with whom we will continue to partner closely. With WiseTech’s global strength and significant innovation capacity invested locally, we will accelerate our drive to improve our customers’ forwarding, warehousing and customs management capability.”

– Patrick Van De Looverbosch, CEO

Click here to see the full media release

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With its network of 35 ICT Experts, Belgacom seeks to offer customers a local partner for all IT, cloud and telecom services. In fact, Intris is the only Belgacom partner specialising in logistics.

Thanks to this partnership we are now also able to offer our customers the Belgacom Proximus services for companies, including mobile communication (the Proximus network offers by far the best performance), cloud computing, data centres, external centres etc. So now you no longer have to deal with Belgacom: just call your normal contact person at Intris.

You can also contact us at any time for more information: sales@intris.be.

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