Brexit brings marriage of convenience foods to NI
Margaret Canning on the changes in our stores,
STEPPING into Sainsbury’s in Belfast’s Forestside Shopping Centre these days feels strange.
That is not due to the continued Covid-19 precautions like hand sanitising, face masks, social distancing and a one-way system — they are now second nature to us.
Instead, it is because of the name on a lot of stock in the supermarket’s fridges.
Gone are the usual Sainsbury’s items; in their place are Spar-branded products from Northern Ireland food wholesaler and retailer Henderson Group.
Even though it is an international name, such have been its assiduous marketing efforts and advertising campaigns here over many decades that, for many, you can’t get anything more local than Spar.
Sainsbury’s and Henderson Group have entered into what could be termed a marriage of convenience foods, because of the outworkings of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The agreement between the EU and the UK avoids a hard border in Ireland due to Brexit by essentially putting the frontier in the Irish Sea.
That has brought a new era of checks on the foods being imported by retailers like Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Marks and Spencer, which are all based in Britain and transport huge lorryloads of food here.
Because the protocol keeps us in the single market for goods, we have to abide by EU rules for food items. The strictest of rules apply to chilled meat products.
In theory, grace periods of three months and six months for food imports and chilled meats respectively were to ensure supermarkets could avoid the worst complications of the new red tape, at least in the shortterm.
And it was products containing chilled meats or dairy in some form which accounted for most of the Spar goods on display in Sainsbury’s yesterday.
There was Spar soured cream; Spar cooked ham; Spar meat feast pizza; Spar slow cooked beef and root vegetable mash; Spar sweet and sour chicken, Spar pork and beef sausages...
It is likely that Sainsbury’s wasn’t prepared to take chances on the supply of goods for its 13 local stores and had made its agreement with Henderson some months ago, before the grace periods were announced.
To the eagle-eyed shopper, it appeared remarkable. Yet the strangeness of life in general now seems to have inured yesterday’s Sainsbury’s customers from any kind of shock.
When you are home-schooling your children, when you haven’t hugged your parents in 10 months, and when you are relying on the Government to pay your wages because your employer can’t open, Spar products in Sainsbury’s may not be worth getting worked up about.
Yesterday a spokeswoman for Henderson Group said the arrangement was intended to work both ways.
She said: “Over the last several months we have been contingency planning for Brexit to minimise any disruption to the food supply chain for our 470 stores across Northern Ireland after December 31.
“We can confirm that we have entered into a temporary supply agreement with J Sainsbury supermarkets that will see both parties working together to ensure availability for our customers.
“Henderson Group is a major employer and retailer covering
‘We have entered into temporary agreement with J Sainsbury that will see both parties working together to ensure availability’
every part of Northern Ireland. More than 75% of our fresh products are sourced and made locally.”
A Sainsbury’s spokeswoman said: “A small number of our products are temporarily unavailable for our customers in Northern Ireland while border arrangements are confirmed.
“We were prepared for this and so our customers will find a wide range of alternative products in our stores in the meantime and we are working hard to get back to our full, usual range soon.
“We have a temporary supply agreement with Henderson Wholesale Ltd.
“It is a flexible agreement, but we expect to have the usual range available soon.”
She said the prevalence of Spar products will be dependent on the size of the store, but that there are 100 in total.
“That’s a tiny proportion of products overall,” she added.
“The agreement’s not that unusual.
“For example, elsewhere in the UK we have wholesale agreements which mean Sainsbury’s branded products are stocked by Simply Fresh, Dobbies and WH Smith.”
Aodhan Connolly, director of the NI Retail Consortium, said the Sainsbury’s and Spar tiein demonstrated the levels of preparation made ahead of December 31.
He said that retailers bringing food into Northern Ireland were facing a heavy burden of paperwork, even with the grace periods agreed between the EU and UK.
“Sainsbury’s have been prudent in ensuring their shelves will have the stuff people want to buy,” he said.
Retailers were in a “perfect storm” of problems as they faced the new protocol rules and the impact of last month’s delays in cross-channel deliveries, which had occurred at Christmas, the industry’s busiest time of year.