Brexit: ‘Cameron simply walked away from his car crash’

Fownes Brewery in Brierley Hill is one of many which has felt the effects of the UK leaving the European Union, with co-owner James Fownes detailing some of the issues he's had to face.

Five years after the vote – and months after the reality of living the EU – he said there have been a number of issues to address.

He said: "The biggest impact for us has been getting the raw ingredients we use for brewing, which are all imported from Europe.

"There's all the speciality malts which we get from Weyerman in Bamburg in Germany, for which the cost went up by 12 percent then, a month later, by another 12 percent and possibly as much as 30 percent in total.

"In addition to that, we also had a change whereby if we ordered an item before, it would take up to two weeks to arrive, but it now takes as long as four weeks to arrive."

Mr Fownes said the turnaround for other ingredients such as dry yeast from France and a one-way keg from the Netherlands had become longer, as well as the cost going up multiple times since Brexit.

He said: "It's taking longer for things to come to us and we're having to hold more ingredients in stock and plan further ahead to make sure we don't run out of things.

"We hold more stock as a result and our overheads for the business have gone up by more than five percent overall and everything we purchase and use has gone up by around 10 per cent.

"If we need to replace our equipment, a lot of that comes from Italy, so in terms of getting parts, we've had to deal with the costs of the parts and of the transport going up."

Mr Fownes said he had voted to leave in the referendum, but said what had transpired since the vote had made him want to change his vote.

He said: "I voted leave because there were lots of plusses I could see at the time, with none of them to do with immigration.

"However, David Cameron then resigned and I got very angry as I'd voted for this person to solve the problem, but he left and then the car crash that happened afterwards was a debacle.

"I do believe we are worse off because of Brexit as we have had to spend more and take more time with getting our ingredients."