An online system allowing businesses easy access seafood trade and tariff data has been launched to assist seafood importers and exporters in the UK.
The Seafish Trade and Tariff Tool has been developed by Seafish, the public body that supports the £10bn UK seafood industry, to help seafood businesses through Brexit and beyond.
Designed to be user friendly and interactive, the tool allows users to access historical trade data from 2010 to 2018 and current UK tariff data, giving them an overview of seafood markets. The tool will allow users to drill down into trade by product and country, giving businesses a better understanding of the UK seafood market as the UK prepares to leave the EU.
The tool contains seafood trade data for human consumption only and is based on HMRC data. The data includes weight, value and country by year and can be displayed year by year, making comparisons easy and allowing businesses to identify trends and opportunities. It has been built using business intelligence and analytics software Tableau.
It was launched at the Scottish Seafood Summit in Aberdeen by Arina Motova, Interim Chief Economist.
‘Until now, businesses have had to get in touch with us or HMRC to ask us to provide this information, which can take time and businesses had to create their own visuals to analyse that data,’ Arina Motova said.
‘Having the data just a few clicks away within a self-service tool means businesses can access whatever information they want in their own time and their own way – from enquiries as specific as the volume and value of import and tariff on frozen warm water shrimp imported to UK from India, for example, to obtaining a more general background picture on export and markets they might be considering entering.’
‘We’ve consulted with industry during the development of the Seafish Trade and Tariff Tool to ensure it’s informative without being too complicated to use. Seafish of course will continue to provide analysis on complex data to the industry when requested.’
The Seafish Trade and Tariff Tool is available at seafish.org/t4
