We're outside a brand new warehouse belonging to American logistics firm, PFS
in the English city of Southampton.
This place has been opened for one word and one reason - Brexit.
Businesses across Britain are battling a stubbornly uncertain Brexit future,
with well-known names ready to shut down their U.K. facilities or shift jobs overseas.
But this e-commerce firm has chosen a different route.
You're looking to expand in the next few weeks?
Absolutely.
What we see now is not the full picture.
It will not be all of it, no.
Lisa Cooley left Memphis, Tennessee late last year
to open this new fulfillment center in the port city of Southampton.
She's barely gotten her feet under the table, but Brexit's March 29 deadline is already demanding her attention.
It's a task, trying to start something up in that span of time.
And it's also a task trying to get inventory moved and imported here and
set up and you have processes you have to build around that.
I believe it's a little chaotic in the beginning but, at the end, our goal is to service our client.
Her company employs thousands of workers worldwide and those clients are as global as their consumers.
Until recently, PFS had only one major European warehouse in Belgium,
just an hour outside Brussels where U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has traveled again and again
to try and salvage her divorce deal with the EU.
Regardless of how well or badly Brexit negotiations go in the coming weeks,
it's clear that many sectors seeking to do business here in Britain have already made significant changes,
and this warehouse is one big example.
Logistics can be relentless and companies like PFS cannot wait on the politicians
while they wrap, pack and ship people's parcels.
Opening a new fulfillment center, it's not an easy task. There's timelines.
It takes time to get equipment, it takes time to get your systems up and going.
Of course you have to go through the process of hiring employees
and time, I wouldn't necessarily say is on the side of the retailers we service.
It's not just time, is it? It's money, right?
So you guys are spending money on building a facility like this, hiring people here in the U.K.
Does that, in your view, get passed on to someone in the end?
Yeah, I think essentially it goes to the consumer at the end, right?
With five weeks to go, if it's a no deal, there would be for them an initial cost increase as they up their capacity
to enable traders that do business with EU companies to work as if they were doing trade
with the rest of the world today, and those costs have already been incurred as a contingency measure.
Brexit may have shattered British politics, but the economy has so far survived
with unemployment at its lowest level in generations.
I think in the long run it's more the uncertainty of not know which direction you're going to proceed,
I think that's the biggest concern and the biggest challenge here.
And as firms make preparations, and banks book provisions,
those Brexit concerns are now big enough to fill a building.