Last modified on Sun 31 Jan 2021 18.53 EST
It is day eight in a depot in Lymm just outside Warrington, Cheshire and a lorry carrying frozen carrots and mixed herbs is still waiting for clearance to board a ferry from Birkenhead to Belfast.
Six separate customers, supermarkets and corner stores have other consignments on truck, all stuck in Lymm because the paperwork for a single pallet of carrots is missing key information.
Hundreds of miles away in Lisburn in Northern Ireland, the haulage firm’s operations team have had no luck in persuading the British supplier that the carrots that were ordered on 27 December are now, in the third week in January, classed as an export and must be accompanied by a litany of documents and certificates before the trailer can be cleared to board the ferry at Birkenhead.