Brexit-ready and still caught out: A lesson for every exporter

Rural Shropshire is home to the UK’s last remaining producer of flat-rolled aluminium coils. Bridgnorth Aluminium employs over 330 people and has annual sales in excess of £230m, around 60 per cent of which come from Europe. Since its founding as Star Aluminium almost a century ago, the company has had to weather a few sizeable storms. One of them was Brexit.

Commercial director Adrian Musgrave, who has been at the company since 2004, says it was better prepared for the uncertainty of Brexit. This was thanks to exporting to countries such as the US, India and Brazil and he uses Brexit’s ‘rules of origin’ as an example.

The rules-of-origin trap

“We had rolling slabs coming in from the Middle East that were already cast and we’d roll them down thinner,” he says. “That was not enough of a transformation to qualify as UK origin. For the US, it would have been fine but for the EU it wasn’t.”

But preparation only went so far. Reflecting on that time, Musgrave says that EU and North American competitors were instantly given the upper hand.

The company had to increase its shipping team and spend valuable management time on understanding how to manage the processes and the required documentation: “Even as a business that understands some of that and knew what questions to ask, we still had to get our heads around it.”

Musgrave credits the Department for Business and Trade for being open to dialogue and lobbying on Bridgnorth Aluminium’s behalf, although the resulting trade deals left a lot to be desired.

“The UK did trade deals which basically mirrored a lot of the EU deals that were already in place,” he says. “There was quite a lot of noise and fanfare around them. For me, it was just trying to restore what we had previously.”

Luck, not strategy

The company, whose product range includes aluminium for printing plates and packaging pre-materials such as yoghurt lids and medication blister packs, has seen green shoots of promise since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. Some argue that the US president has handed a tariff advantage to the UK over the EU, but Musgrave is sceptical.

“That wasn't really a direct result of Brexit,” he says. “It's a roller coaster that could have gone either way. Ultimately, we found a way through when we maintained our customer relationships and we kept doing business. With Trump, we're not quite sure what he's going to do from one day to the next. So we've been, in my view, we've been a bit lucky.”

Bridgnorth Aluminium is owned by major Belgium-registered Greek holding company Viohalco SA and has experienced post-Brexit challenges when it comes to talent. Shop-floor operations across its expansive 66-acre site are generally staffed by the local community. However, as the aluminium industry is small in the UK, the company relies on filling highly skilled technical engineering roles from Europe.

“At the end of the day, at least in our industry, there is so much integration and interaction between the UK and the EU,” Musgrave reflects. “The supply chains are crossing the borders all the time. It's our major trading partner. To me, this doesn't make any sense not to be part of the European market.”

What does this mean for exporters?

Know the origin rules for every market, not just the EU: The same part-processed slab counted as UK origin for the US but failed the test for the EU. The substantial-transformation threshold differs by destination, so check it before you ship, not after.

Resource compliance before it bites: Bridgnorth Aluminium had to grow its shipping team and divert management time to documentation. Treat customs and logistics capacity not as an afterthought but as a cost of trading.

Protect the customer relationships that carry you through: Musgrave credits surviving the disruption to keeping customers close and continuing to trade, which can also be considered the asset no spreadsheet predicts.