Stowaway migrants cost fruit and veg importer over £350.000

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Stowaway migrants have cost fruit importer £350,000 after breaking its lorries 15 times in a year

Stowaway migrants have cost fruit and vegetable importer over £350,000
Vehicles carrying produce for firm Gomez have been broken into 15 times
Canterbury-based family-run grocery business has had to pick up the bill
In the past four weeks alone, £80,000 of haulage has had to be discarded

Gomez managing director Jim Parmenter (pictured) said dozens of scanners should be installed at the French border so that stowaways are detected

Stowaway migrants have cost a fruit and vegetable importer more than £350,000 in a year.

Vehicles carrying produce for Gomez have been broken into 15 times over the past 12 months – leaving the family-run firm to pick up the bill.

In the past four weeks alone £80,000 of haulage has had to be discarded amid fears of contamination, after stowaways were found inside the lorries with bottles of urine and dirty clothes.

Managing director Jim Parmenter last night called for urgent action, following the discovery of 26 migrants in a lorry at the firm's Canterbury depot on Wednesday.

He said dozens of scanners should be installed at the French border so that stowaways are detected before they reach Britain.

'You can never have enough people because there are thousands of lorries coming through each day – it has to be technology, that's the solution,' Mr Parmenter said.

'The answer is to stop them getting here in the first place. It's too easy to get on a lorry in Calais.'

Mr Parmenter, who joined the firm in 1989, has become exasperated after five years of disruption and seeing around 100 migrants a year emerging from the back of trucks.

He added that he is 'hacked off' with the public perception of migrants escaping war-torn countries for a safer life.

'In the main, most of these people are young men between 17 and 28, all fit, all on their mobile phones as soon as they get off the lorry, all smoking, all happy,' he said.

'We know that not all of them are from places where there are wars. It makes us angry that it's costing us and potentially threatening our employees' jobs.'

Insurance companies do not cover loss of produce due to migrants breaking into the lorries and Gomez is not compensated in any way.

Twenty Iranians and five Iraqis - including five children were packed inside the back of the lorry in Kent

Mr Parmenter said the situation was not helped by the free movement allowed within mainland Europe.

'In the old days [migrants] would have to come through five or six borders to get to Calais – now they come straight to Calais. We are effectively policing the border of the whole of Europe.'

Nigel Jenney, of the Fresh Produce Consortium, said: 'Stowaways continue to be a problem. The damage caused has cost responsible businesses millions of pounds and wasted tons of food.

'The situation is unsustainable and the Government must do more to protect hauliers.'

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