Britain’s imports and exports discussed in three-part series

Presenters Ed Balls, Ade Adepitan and Cherry Healey delve into the hectic world of Britain’s imports and exports in a new three-part OU / BBC collaboration.

As our trading relationships face their biggest change in decades, What Britain Buys and Sells in a Day explores how much we really know about the science and systems that enable Britain to import and export goods around the world on an unprecedented scale.

The first episode, which focuses on fruit and veg, is on BBC2 at 21:00 on Monday 30 September. Ed is at London Gateway to see how the fruit and veg that we love travels across the globe but arrives on our shelves in tip-top condition; Ade travels the world, including Peru, the Netherlands and Spain, looking at how Britain’s changing tastes for fruit and veg are impacting farmers everywhere; and Cherry meets British producers to see what and how we export to some surprising places.

Episode two is on a commodity the UK buys and sells in huge quantities – seafood. Surprisingly, the fish caught off British shores is largely dispatched abroad as exports, whereas the fish we eat here tends to be imported.

The third and final episode is on Britain’s biggest export market and an industry which employs more than 850,000 people – cars.

Dr Paul Walley from OUBS was one of the academic consultants for the series alongside OU colleagues Alan Shipman and Dr Stuart Parris.