Automating Brexit for you

Customs declarations will rocket from the current 50m a year to 250m after Brexit, overwhelming the country’s customs brokerage capacity and HMRC’s capability to manage physical processes, which is why we have developed digital Brexit solutions.

The government’s Border Operating Model, released by the Border and Protocol Delivery Group in July, definitively outlines Brexit border processes and responsibilities for EU/UK imports and exports, including the much-vaunted ‘light touch’ regime for imports and the opportunity to defer customs declarations, VAT and Duty for six months.

Access to the ‘light touch’ regime and its associated cashflow benefits require HMRC authorisation to use simplified procedures, which Metro holds and can offer to its customers.

Providing ‘light touch’ support to importing customers and submitting the critical declarations for exporting customers means that Metro will be processing up to an estimated fifty thousand additional customs documents every month and digital automation will be key.

We have been working on our own transition planning for the last few years, developing a suite of advanced software tools in-house. 

Our objective is to automate data receipt, analysis and output through machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence and data transfers to HMRC. 

We recognise that digital solutions will not be suitable for every customer or situation and a certain amount of human expertise is required for these interventions. 

Our HR team has been recruiting talent through the earlier phases of Brexit, predominantly  colleagues at all locations and we continue to take on new members of the team to accommodate the huge influx of customs entries and administrative processes that ensure our customers continue to trade seamlessly with The European Union.

We have recently added 10 new starters to the Brexit team, at our Birmingham facility and a recruitment drive is currently underway at our overseas business process outsource (BPO) operations in Malaysia and India, to assist with the automated platforms we are establishing directly with customs authorities.

For further information on how we will assist you in the new environment in 2021 please call Andrew White or Jade Barrow who are leading our Brexit Team Task Force and will have the answers to most of your questions as the situation continues to develop and unwind.