Are you Canadian? Like British Cheddar? Enjoy it While You Can Still Find It
December 27, 2023 | 1 min to read
As Darren Larvin, managing director of Coombe Castle International, gazed out at the grey skies in Wiltshire, he forecasted a troubling decline in Canadian cheese sales for 2024, predicting they would "fall off the edge of a cliff." Following Brexit, an interim agreement allowed tariff-free British cheese in Canada, but that arrangement expires soon, leaving uncertainty about future trade relations beyond what CETA once provided with the European Union.
The grey weather outside Darren Larvin’s window in Wiltshire, U.K., when he spoke to CBC News last Tuesday matched the forecast for his company’s Canadian cheese sales in 2024.
“Essentially, we’re going to fall off the edge of a cliff at the end of this year,” said the managing director of Coombe Castle International, an award-winning global exporter of British dairy products like specialty creams, butters and cheeses.
After Brexit — the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union in 2020 — an interim agreement kept tariff-free British cheese on Canadian shelves for three years, as government negotiators worked on a longer-term bilateral trade deal to replace the liberalized trade the U.K. enjoyed under the terms of Canada’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the EU.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: CBC News