Lorries creating long tailbacks at English Channel ferry ports caused by Brexit stockpiling has cost Irish transport firms lost time, heavier overheads and valuable delivery slots, industry insiders said.

Irish lorries have been caught up in road-side “stacking” of vehicles over the past week and logistics businesses fear that traffic gridlock around the Kent ports of Dover and Folkestone and at Calais in France are a foretaste of more severe disruptions once Brexit checks start in January.

Laurence O’Toole, managing director of Co Galway-based O’Toole Transport, said he had to hire extra drivers in the UK for next-day deliveries of seafood from Ireland and Scotland to France because of seven-hour delays at the ports.

This has added costs of up to 40 per cent and reduced productivity at his firm, which transports produce to and from a major seafood distribution hub in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

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