French blamed for contract loss (From Business in Dorset)

French blamed for contract loss

9:00am Friday 12th March 2010

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French protectionism is being blamed after a Christchurch company lost £1.3m worth of work.

John Reid & Sons (Strucsteel) Ltd in Reid Street had secured two contracts with JCB (Jean Claude Beaudet) Aero in Auch near Toulouse to design and build a £1m aircraft hangar and £350,000 workshop.

In order to secure permission to build in France, the builder must have decennial insurance (assurance decennale), whereby a French insurance company approves the plans, giving a 10-year warranty.

“We did not think this was a problem,” said technical director Rollo Reid, who approached the company’s insurers, one of the biggest in Fran-ce, which said it was unable to help.

“There was no way we could do this unless we had an office in France – it costs quite a lot to open an office,” Mr Reid said, adding that John Reid & Sons exports to 130 countries and does very little work in France.

“We went to the commissioner at Brussels and asked him to intervene. He said this form of protectionism is wrong and that he could not do anything about it.

“This contract has been lost to Europe, it makes me very angry.”

Mr Reid has become even more frustrated having been told that a waste processing plant is being built in Cornwall by a French company using French workers.

The Christchurch business, which has won the Queen’s Award for Export four times, has since “secured other orders to fill the gap”.

“We are sending bridges to Uganda and Sudan. We have done a hangar for Lufthansa in Malta,” Mr Reid said, adding that it took his company, a year to build and generated £5.5m.

Next door to John Reid & Sons is NC Geary Precision Engineering, which has been a subcontractor to that business for 30 years, making doors for its hangars. As a result of Reid’s misfortune, NC Geary has lost out on £10,000 of business, according to managing director Nick Geary.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said: “Based on the information available, there is no indication as to a possible infringement of any EU rules. It is a commercial decision as to what kind of products private operators, such as insurance companies, offer and to whom. Therefore the European Commission cannot intervene.”

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