The blockade and attacks on Spanish trucks in France are already having negative, even serious economic consequences for the province of Alicante. Carriers from the start It is estimated that the industry’s loss was around two million euros in the seven days that the protests lasted., because the time it takes to serve the goods has doubled. Agriculture is the other major sector affected; so that Fruit and vegetable shipments to Europe, especially citrus fruits, decreased by 50 percentIn a context where customers are canceling orders due to delays.
The protests of French farmers, which consisted of indiscriminate road closures, caused disruptions in both logistics and transportation in the first days. However, day by day, the continuation of the conflict has now reached the level of economic losses. This is reported by the Alicante Transport Federation (Fetrama); Nearly a thousand trucks passing through France are taking twice as long as usual to deliver their goods.
According to Antonio Gabaldón, secretary general of this organization, “Services that were previously carried out in four days are now carried out in an average of eight days. if you take this into consideration A truck day costs 600 Euros.“We will see that the losses are already very high.” And he adds that this is only due to loss of profit, because the damage that the product may suffer must be added to these figures.
The Fetrama representative points out that the situation on French roads has changed. “It notes that protests have focused on the outskirts of Paris in recent hours, meaning the repression is not as intense in the rest of the country. But still, Trucks are forced to seek alternative routes on secondary roads, so delays continue to occur”.
The other sector where the problem persists is agriculture, because since the conflict began fields have been alternating with other days of activity, with the harvest paralyzed. This Wednesday was one of the last, given the desperation of producers seeing how their crops piled up. One of them is José Vicente Andreu, who is also the president of Asaja Alicante. In his own words, “Due to delays in shipments on the one hand and crises on the other, the warehouses of exporting companies are starting to fill up. order cancellationsTheir numbers are increasing precisely because of these delays.” So much so that it is estimated that exports have decreased by almost half and it will no longer be possible to compensate for these sales.
Andreu also attacks French farmers in the same way, he understands this They try to make it look like a protest against Europe’s agricultural policies, when in reality they claim it’s “an attack on Spanish products.”. And he regrets that all this happened “with the tolerance of the authorities of the neighboring country.”