Farmers meat in costly sandwich

Couriers are delivering ‘‘inedible’’ meat to customers as they struggle to keep up with a surge in demand, the owners of a small free-range pork business say.

As Covid-19 restrictions eased, and the focus for businesses moved from ‘‘essential’’ to ‘‘safe’’ economic activity, courier companies experienced a sharp increase in demand.

Bryan Dobson, chief marketing officer for Courier Post operator NZ Post, said it was receiving about 300,000 parcels a day, volumes usually seen at Christmas.

‘‘The difference here is that we normally have months to plan and prepare for Christmas, for level three we only had days.’’

Although the increase in online shopping is good news for the economy, it’s a costly headache for Manawatu¯ husband and wife Daniel Todd and Claire Ongley. Their business, Woody’s Free Range Farm, processes about 2000kg of pork a week through its butchery and factory in Levin.

Before lockdown, much of that was destined for restaurants and cafes but, since the hospitality industry shut up shop at alert level four, they have become more reliant on online sales.

‘‘We were sending 150 parcels a day with Courier Post at the peak of level four and we had very few delivery failures . . . It was when online shopping opened up at level three that things started to go wrong,’’ Todd said.

Despite paying a premium for an overnight service, late and failed deliveries last week cost Todd and Ongley $1500 in refunds to seven customers.

‘‘This morning, I was getting an email every five minutes from people saying they’d looked at the tracking and the parcel we sent on [May 6] isn’t going to be delivered until May 11– obviously it’s going to be inedible by then,’’ Todd said.

Dobson said NZ Post was doing everything possible to meet the extra demand, including bringing on extra vehicles and workers.

Perishables were given priority but there were still delays, he said.

‘‘We understand that this is of little comfort to businesses ... having their perishable product impacted by these delays. We wish to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this causes.’’

However, even during normal times, Courier Post was unable to guarantee overnight delivery.

‘‘When you are dealing with the physical transportation of goods there are many things outside of our control – weather, road outages, traffic congestion, flight delays – that can impact delivery.

‘‘It is standard practice across our industry not to guarantee overnight delivery. This means that customers who choose to send perishable items though our network do so at their own risk.’’

NZ Post does not take responsibility for perishable goods or accept compensation claims for perishables.