We're outside a brand new warehouse
belonging to American logistics firm, PFS
in the English city of Southampton.
This place has been opened for
one word and one reason - Brexit.
Businesses across Britain are battling
a stubbornly uncertain Brexit future,
with well-known names ready to shut down
their U.K. facilities or shift jobs overseas.
But this e-commerce firm
has chosen a different route.
You're looking to expand
in the next few weeks?
Absolutely.
What we see now is not the full picture.
It will not be all of it, no.
Lisa Cooley left Memphis,
Tennessee late last year
to open this new fulfillment center
in the port city of Southampton.
She's barely gotten her feet under the table, but Brexit's
March 29 deadline is already demanding her attention.
It's a task, trying to start something
up in that span of time.
And it's also a task trying to get inventory
moved and imported here and
set up and you have processes
you have to build around that.
I believe it's a little chaotic in the beginning but,
at the end, our goal is to service our client.
Her company employs thousands of workers worldwide
and those clients are as global as their consumers.
Until recently, PFS had only one major
European warehouse in Belgium,
just an hour outside Brussels where U.K. Prime
Minister Theresa May has traveled again and again
to try and salvage her
divorce deal with the EU.
Regardless of how well or badly Brexit
negotiations go in the coming weeks,
it's clear that many sectors seeking to do business
here in Britain have already made significant changes,
and this warehouse
is one big example.
Logistics can be relentless and companies
like PFS cannot wait on the politicians
while they wrap, pack and
ship people's parcels.
Opening a new fulfillment center, it's
not an easy task. There's timelines.
It takes time to get equipment, it takes
time to get your systems up and going.
Of course you have to go through
the process of hiring employees
and time, I wouldn't necessarily say is
on the side of the retailers we service.
It's not just time, is it?
It's money, right?
So you guys are spending money on building a
facility like this, hiring people here in the U.K.
Does that, in your view, get passed
on to someone in the end?
Yeah, I think essentially it goes to
the consumer at the end, right?
With five weeks to go, if it's a no deal, there would be for
them an initial cost increase as they up their capacity
to enable traders that do business with EU
companies to work as if they were doing trade
with the rest of the world today, and those costs have
already been incurred as a contingency measure.
Brexit may have shattered British politics,
but the economy has so far survived
with unemployment at its
lowest level in generations.
I think in the long run it's more the uncertainty of
not know which direction you're going to proceed,
I think that's the biggest concern
and the biggest challenge here.
And as firms make preparations,
and banks book provisions,
those Brexit concerns are now
big enough to fill a building.
