No milk or water: shoppers face shortages at UK grocery stores

“Last week I ran out of Coca-Cola. I haven’t had big bottles of Evian for three weeks,” Patel said.

“Without products, there is no business. With empty shelves like this, no one is going to come into the store anyway,” he said.

A wide range of businesses in the UK have been facing shortages for several months now – from milkshakes at McDonald’s to beers at the pub chain to mattresses at Ikea.

But shoppers are also facing empty shelves for basic items like water and milk at UK supermarkets and grocery stores.

The coronavirus crisis has severely disrupted global supply chains, but Britain’s divorce from the European Union late last year has exacerbated the problem in Britain.

Shops can’t find products for them as regulations make it harder to hire EU citizens, leaving haulage companies with a severe shortage of lorry drivers.

Many people who returned to their country from Britain during the lockdown have not returned yet.

Co-op supermarket group Co-op said it was “affected by some poor delivery” for its deliveries, but it was working with suppliers to quickly stock up.

The group said it was recruiting 3,000 temporary workers “to keep the depot working to capacity and stock the store as quickly as possible”.

– Where’s the milk? –

According to recent estimates, the UK currently faces a shortage of around 100,000 lorry drivers.

Patel said, “We had already decided to reduce our stock due to Covid…

In a supermarket near his store, the soft drink aisle was short of bottles and cans, but other shelves were full.

But 22-year-old sales assistant Toma said the situation was dire.

“We don’t have stock, we don’t have anything in our warehouse,” said Toma, who declined to give his last name.

“We have gaps everywhere,” she said. “Sometimes we only get a certain amount (of certain products). We don’t even have water.”

Toma said the shortage began when the pandemic hit and got worse after Brexit came into force on January 1.

Some customers complain to supermarket staff and “say it’s us to blame”, she said.

At another large supermarket in south-east London, water bottles were sparse and milk was missing from shelves.

Frozen-food group Iceland and retail giant Tesco have warned of Christmas shortages.

Iceland chief Richard Walker said the company had reduced deliveries because it had 100 fewer drivers than it needed.

“Every day we are missing about 10 percent of the ordered stock at our depots,” he wrote in a blog, “when things were at their worst” when its only bread supplier was unable to deliver to 130 stores. . every day.

– ‘Perfect Storm’ –

According to a note by Capital Economics, a research consultancy, the shortage of goods in the UK “probably will last for some time and may intensify even further”.

A report from the Confederation of British Industry this week cited the Road Haulage Association as saying it would take at least 18 months to train heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers to replace those who left.

For the CBI, the twin effects of Brexit and Covid-19 are a “perfect storm”.

According to the CBI, the stock levels in relation to expected sales fell more than 20 per cent in August to a record low in the retail and distribution sector.

The group has urged the government to be more flexible on immigration and add skilled lorry drivers to the list of occupations that lack workers.

Road transport companies and businesses that rely on deliveries are offering bonuses and higher wages in an effort to retain drivers, but the move has raised concerns that they could contribute to rising inflation.

Ryan Koningen, 49, a project manager at a company in the City of London, said his colleagues often discussed the situation and “the question of cost: will they increase because drivers are paid a premium?”

He also said that he has noticed a shortage of “day-to-day products”.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.