Beyond the Border

Post-Brexit Realities & Making an In-House Legal Hire in UK FMCG

By Dan Bown, Legal Recruiter specialising in in-house legal recruitment

Few sectors felt the effects of leaving the EU as quickly or as persistently as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). The port delay headlines have faded, but the cost of cross-border trade has not. The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) reports that UK food and drink export volumes fell 11.7% in the first half of 2026, taking trade to its third-lowest level on record. Imported ingredient and raw material costs also remain well above pre-pandemic levels.

Food, drink and lifestyle brands now face non-tariff barriers, changing rules of origin and diverging UK and EU regulation. Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks add a continuing cost to food and agricultural supply chains. Negotiations on a UK-EU SPS agreement are still under way, with the government aiming for it to take effect from mid-2027, so the rules remain a moving target for now.

Multinationals can absorb this by scaling compliance teams and instructing retained City firms. Mid-market FMCG businesses and SMEs cannot, and they need a different approach to commercial risk and in-house talent. 

If you are a CEO, COO, FD or HR lead weighing a legal hire, this piece sets out why the case is stronger now, what the role should cover and what senior lawyers will expect from it.

The Mid-Market Squeeze: Where Supply Chain and Compliance Collide

Growing consumer brands depend on cross-border agility. They source specialty ingredients or packaging from the EU, manufacture or assemble in the UK, and sell finished products back into Europe. Border paperwork, changing labelling requirements and new product standards put real pressure on operating margins.

When a distribution agreement fails because of customs delays, or cost inflation forces you to vet new UK suppliers at speed, the problem is not only logistics or procurement. It is a legal and commercial one.

Many mid-market FMCG businesses have handled this reactively. Founders, operations directors or finance leads held general oversight, and external counsel was called in only for a major dispute or a significant contract. That model is under strain now that regulatory friction is the permanent baseline. Ad hoc advice cannot keep pace with daily supply chain decisions.

Without legal oversight built into procurement and supply chain discussions, the exposure is concrete: unexpected tariff liabilities, penalties for rules of origin non-compliance and costly bottlenecks. The question for your board is no longer whether legal risk exists in the supply chain. It is whether your internal capability can spot and contain it before it reaches the bottom line.

Why In-House, and Why Now

Ambitious consumer brands are rethinking what they need from legal. They are no longer treating compliance as a back-office function or waiting for a crisis to justify external spend. They want senior counsel who sits in executive discussions and owns commercial risk, not a corporate generalist who reviews documents from a distance.

Four needs come up most often:

• Regulatory foresight. UK and EU product standards may diverge further, and any move towards closer alignment would change them again. You need counsel who anticipates change before it causes halted shipments or reformulation costs at the border. That takes technical regulatory knowledge and commercial judgement.
• Contract resilience. Legacy supplier, logistics and distribution agreements rarely have the flexibility to cope with sustained cost inflation and border delays. Your lawyer should be able to rework them without stalling commercial momentum.
• Speed with compliance. In FMCG, time to market is everything. The right lawyer works alongside commercial teams, so risk management supports growth rather than blocking it.
• Range on a tight budget. Mid-market SMEs cannot fund a large legal department. You need an adaptable lawyer who takes ownership of a complex regulatory brief quickly and works directly with the executive team.

What the Role Should Cover

As food, drink and personal care brands scale, the legal workload spreads across technical areas that hit the P&L directly. These are the areas to scope into the role:

• Tariff classification and origin audits. Post-Brexit trade needs close legal oversight of customs coding, tariff classification and rules of origin thresholds. A misclassified ingredient or finished product can bring retroactive customs penalties, unexpected tariffs and border holds that damage shelf life and gross margin.
• Ingredient sourcing, health and safety. Sourcing agricultural raw materials and specialist ingredients across UK, EU and global markets means dealing with SPS checks, novel food authorisations and strict health and safety standards. In-house counsel makes sure supplier warranties, ingredient traceability and factory safety protocols hold up under regulatory scrutiny and in a product recall.
• Environmental labelling and packaging. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, the plastic packaging tax and rules on environmental claims, including the CMA's Green Claims Code and tighter EU requirements, all reach into packaging. Legal needs to audit packaging supply chains, check that environmental claims can be substantiated and keep labelling compliant across export markets, to avoid enforcement action and reputational damage.
• Risk sharing in volatile supply chains. When raw material costs spike or freight routes stall, standard supply agreements leave you open to unilateral cost increases from manufacturers and logistics providers. Specialist FMCG counsel builds price adjustment formulas, clear force majeure wording and service level guarantees into supplier and distribution contracts to protect margins.

Relying on finance directors or external retainers to cover these overlapping demands compounds the exposure. A dedicated legal hire lets you audit the supply chain, check product compliance before full-scale manufacturing and pursue commercial plans with a clear view of regulatory risk.

What Senior Lawyers Will Expect From the Role

Senior Legal Counsel and General Counsel candidates leaving private practice or large corporate legal teams rarely want a siloed role. They look for positions where legal input connects directly to product lifecycle and brand growth. A vague remit will cost you good applicants, so build the role around these points:

• Early involvement with procurement and NPD. Strong candidates want to work with new product development (NPD), procurement and supply chain teams from day one. Legal input on ingredient sourcing, packaging compliance and EPR obligations is most valuable before a product reaches the production line, so give the role a seat in those meetings.
• A real part in retailer negotiations. Candidates look for the chance to support commercial teams in high-stakes negotiations. Experience of supermarket listing terms, supply chain risk sharing and the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) lets a lawyer protect revenue and profit directly, so make that part of your pitch.
• Cross-border scope. International distribution, overseas brand IP protection and live UK and EU product standard divergence give candidates the complexity that top-tier talent wants. If your role offers it, say so in the brief.

Looking Ahead

Trade rules, environmental requirements and product standards will keep changing across UK FMCG, and the gap between a legal risk and a commercial loss is small. For a growing consumer brand, a legal function that understands production, tariffs, packaging and retail is not an overhead. It protects gross margin, secures the supply chain and supports long-term business valuation.

Related Articles:

Breaking Into (and Building) In-House Sports Legal Teams

Hiring Your First General Counsel in the UK

From Senior Counsel to General Counsel