Duty Free to the EU is Back

[BayPaul]

A thought has come to mind, and apologies if this has been mentioned up thread. This will put a big dent in Eurotunnel day trip traffic. When you are spending £50 return + petrol to bring back a couple of hundred bottles of wine it made sense. Not now you can only bring back 24.

That's very true, and for ferries as well. It is one of the reasons I speculated up thread that the foot passenger market might see a slight uptick, as the quantities you'll be able to bring back are hand-luggageable, but not enough to warrant buying a vehicle ticket for. As you rightly replied, whether there's enough money to be made out of £10 tickets to make running a bus from the foot passenger terminal to the gangway is questionable! Day trip vehicle traffic will definitely drop though. I've sat around a table with the ops people from a whole load of ferry operators, discussing all this, and they don't see duty free as a particular benefit to their business of Brexit. Think more a cherry on the top of a heap of horse-manure!

 

[Starmill]

The French do have excise duty on wine, it’s just not very much - about 3p a litre compared to our nearly £3. They do however charge VAT at 20% as we do.

In my experience, though, what makes the difference in wine prices is the buying power of the supermarkets. French supermarkets do have wine at £3-£4 a bottle, but not much, and you wouldn’t want to drink it. However they have plenty of lower mid range wine for £5-£8 which you would be paying more than double for over here. At the top end, prices are comparable. Conversely, non-French wine is typically cheaper in U.K. supermarkets than France, principally because the French sell so little of it they don’t have

A good point. I find if one is prepared to give several lesser known vineyards a try, for example from Portugal, one can find remarkable value per bottle in the middle of the market despite having paid wine duty and VAT in the UK. You ain't gonna get that on a ferry.

Of course there are also some other services that try to exploit this by buying an entire harvest of grapes for one distributor, the likes of Naked Wines etc. That probably appeals far more than duty free wine to most people, and you don't have to carry it to your house yourself.

 

[EAD]

Sorry all keep having issues when posting, but see a healthy discussion on wine has ensued in the meantime

Some good points re shopping about and the impact or not of UK duty given how much more it is than elsewhere. I was thinking about it more in what it means to bring things back. Right now you can bring v good quality locally paid duty/taxed EU wine in to UK without a limit (beyond levels suggesting duty fraud). That can also of course be wine you simply can't get in the UK - I have family in Austria and Sicily for example and while you can get some of their wines now in the UK it is a fraction of the full offering.

Going forward you lose that and of course if over allowance you need to declare and pay UK duty (which is a lot higher than neighbouring wine producing countries). Going the other way, people even now are likely to only be bringing gift bottles e.g. Scotch, with added cigarettes if duty free price is better than local taxed price (subject to the duty free levels that will apply).

 

[paul1609]

That's very true, and for ferries as well. It is one of the reasons I speculated up thread that the foot passenger market might see a slight uptick, as the quantities you'll be able to bring back are hand-luggageable, but not enough to warrant buying a vehicle ticket for. As you rightly replied, whether there's enough money to be made out of £10 tickets to make running a bus from the foot passenger terminal to the gangway is questionable! Day trip vehicle traffic will definitely drop though. I've sat around a table with the ops people from a whole load of ferry operators, discussing all this, and they don't see duty free as a particular benefit to their business of Brexit. Think more a cherry on the top of a heap of horse-manure!

In the winter us locals are usually offered £25 day trips on Eurotunnel. Assuming 2 people in the car thats 48 bottles of wine, a day out and no more expensive than foot passenger ferries. I don't really see much of a change tbh.

 

[davyp]

Gentle nudge to the thread:
On my first trip abroad (student exchange to Nantes) it was demonstrated to us all by one of the leaders that 'duty free' wasn't worth it. My subsequent travels have reinforced that lesson. Of all our travelling over the past 12 years, the only place where duty free was worth anything at all was Gibraltar - 2 x 1 litre bottles of Bombay Saphire Gin for £15 (2015). As Bald Ric says, Morrisons etc. are cheaper, especially when the offers are on.

 

[BayPaul]

Gentle nudge to the thread:
On my first trip abroad (student exchange to Nantes) it was demonstrated to us all by one of the leaders that 'duty free' wasn't worth it. My subsequent travels have reinforced that lesson. Of all our travelling over the past 12 years, the only place where duty free was worth anything at all was Gibraltar - 2 x 1 litre bottles of Bombay Saphire Gin for £15 (2015). As Bald Ric says, Morrisons etc. are cheaper, especially when the offers are on.

Another vote for Gib Bombay Sapphire! And I think that’s about the only thing I’ve bought duty free as well!