Shops and restaurants ‘could face food shortages’

A MIDLAND food company boss has warned of future shortages in supermarkets and in restaurants.

A perfect storm of Brexit, the pandemic and a shortage of workers will lead to empty shelves in shops and no fresh food in restaurants, claimed Tim O’Malley, group managing director of Nationwide Produce in Evesham.

The dire warning was backed up by the trade website, The Grocer.

It is predicting that the end of lockdown, combined with summer holidays, could be the tipping point for the industry and lead to food shortages in the UK.

Nationwide Produce has a large depot in Evesham and grows, trades and imports fresh food to businesses across the UK.

Mr O’Malley, writing on his blog, said the biggest immediate problem was a desperate shortage of lorry drivers.

He said perfectly good fresh food was having to be thrown away because of the shortage of truckers.

“The acute shortage of HGV drivers is now the direct cause of perfectly good, graded and packed fresh produce being dumped or rotting in cold stores, waiting for wheels to go under it,” he said.

“Supermarket shelves and restaurant plates are going empty – this is a crisis of national importance.”

Mr O’Malley said one of the major restaurant chains – which is booming after restrictions were lifted – did not have any fresh food to serve its customers recently due to the HGV driver shortage.

“This is by no means an isolated incident. It’s happening throughout the industry, every day and across all sectors,” he said.

“I heard of one major supermarket chain which had 22 full loads of produce not delivered this weekend due to the shortage of drivers. Goods are being produced but not delivered.”

The shortage is believed to be caused by numerous factors, including European workers returning home due to Brexit, Covid putting a halt to learner drivers taking their tests, not enough workers with visas and the ending of the furlough scheme.

Mr O’Malley said it was a serious situation with long-term consequences.

“So how can we deal with this crisis? There’s no quick fix. While it may take a matter of hours to train a waiter, it takes a lot more time and money to train a lorry driver.”