SVG Sit-Down: NEP UK's Simon Moorhead talks Brexit and Pandemic Challenges to the Mobile Production Truck Business in Europe By Heather McLean, Editor
Friday, October 15, 2021 - 8:33 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Brexit and the pandemic have been two significant pressure points on the outside broadcast businesses over the last 18 months. Here, we talk to Simon Moorhead, managing director at NEP UK Broadcast Services, about how these two major events have affected the way his business now works day to day, and how NEP UK is overcoming these challenges.
What are the key ways in which Brexit is affecting the way you run your business throughout Europe today, and why?
Our overriding mission is always to navigate any and all challenges to deliver the highest quality services to our partners. In this sense, Brexit has become another challenge that we navigate on behalf of our partners.
NEP is a global network, with a sizeable and significant presence throughout Europe, so there is always the ability to harness and leverage our geographic footprint, scale and expertise to deliver in any situation.
However, there are challenges as a consequence of Brexit that NEP UK faces when operating within Europe. An example includes the movement of goods from the UK into Europe and vice versa. We now have the administrative coordination and added expenses of carnets and commercial invoices to move equipment around.
We also have reduced flexibility in terms of the shipping of replacement equipment. The ability to move equipment from various separate projects within Europe becomes more cumbersome when there are no discrete carnets for each separate piece of equipment. This is where we harness and leverage our geographic footprint to provide a more localized broadcast services solution with the associated technical expertise.
The movement of people has also become a new challenge which means that our ability for NEP UK to deliver within Europe requires more coordination. We allocate resources to research, collate accurate information and provide updates and guidance on each location. This takes into consideration identifying the right visas, as most countries will have a wide range of options. The specifics of the job, crew and duration of time in the country are all factors.
Events that have required enhanced coordination include the UEFA European Football Championship, the Women's Tennis Association tournament and Formula One. However, we have been well-supported through clients facilitating sport governing body exemptions and host country support.
What major sporting events that you have recently worked on have been more challenging than they should have been because of Brexit? Why and how, and what was the impact on your role in the production?
In addition to the added requirements for carnets, commercial invoices and visas, it takes additional time to compile information to produce shipping paperwork and customs clearance documentation. However, we have navigated all of these challenges to ensure that we deliver for our partners. NEP is truly a global network, meaning we can access equipment and expertise locally, so an urgent requirement for additional resources, for example, is easily accessed from our local presence.
Is Brexit affecting your bottom line? Is it costing you money or making you money?
The challenges associated with Brexit can produce additional costs to business, for example the increased labour resources to process and administer these new requirements. We now have a greater operations and engineering requirement to prepare and document the equipment manifests for shipping and customs.
In terms of the movement of people, we engage with specialist legal counsel to ensure absolute immigration compliance coupled with the visa requirements. There are multiple visa types and identifying the correct ones is of the utmost importance.
How are Brexit and COVID adding to sustainability issues?
NEP has a clear environmental objective, which we share with our partners. We always consider sustainability in these decisions and what we can do to be environmentally friendly.
In terms of Brexit and its direct correlation to sustainability, NEP and our partners are constantly having to look at other available options such as using local (in country) NEP resources or the option of utilizing our network of NEP Production Centers and NEP Data Centers to facilitate the requirements as a remote production. If we can't facilitate the requirements in a traditional methodology because of the constraints, we have to be innovative and practical in finding or making the solution.
COVID-19 has presented challenges to our mission for environmentally sustainable behaviors. Where we had eradicated single-use plastics on site, we no longer can use communal water fountains. We now utilize Perspex isolation shields within OB truck positions, gallery positions and within the administrative areas; again an unavoidable increase in plastics where we had been eradicating their use.
We also have the new order of PPE and the waste that this produces, for example, PPE masks, sanitization gels, sanitization cleaning wipes, lateral flow tests and associated items. These items require us to put further thought into recycling, but this is all part of NEP's overall commitment to sustainability.
How will Brexit continue to affect your business going forward? Is this just the way things are now?
As a business, we have had to adapt and navigate to continue to deliver and serve our partners' needs. That's not going to change. I believe that this will continue to be the new normal for the UK post- Brexit and we are positioned to continue to navigate it. If there is a simplification of the systems and procedures for the movement of goods and people that would help significa
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
SVG Sit-Down: NEP UK's Simon Moorhead talks Brexit and Pandemic Challenges to the Mobile Production Truck Business in Europe By Heather McLean, Editor 
