Food supplies "recovering slowly but out of our control"

Wednesday 11 August 2021

Bottled water, crisps, cereals and biscuits are among the worst-hit products locally as supermarkets continue to experience shortages due to driver shortages and the impact of the UK's 'pingdemic'.

The UK Government has rebuffed reports that the Army has been placed on standby to help restock Britain’s shelves amid truck driver shortages.

The Road Haulage Association, whose Chairman blamed the combined effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit in an interview with Sky News, has argued that enlisting military support would "barely scratch the surface".

The RHA estimates the shortfall of HGV drivers at 100,000 and has made a plea to government to relax Brexit immigration rules to enable foreign workers to return on a temporary basis.

A crisis in the industry is being noticed locally, amid warnings from industry heads on the mainland that the supply issues will only get worse during winter pressures if solutions cannot be found before then.

Mark Crean, Chief Retail Officer at the Channel Islands Co-operative Society, said supplies of some of the high-volume family favourites are "recovering slowly".

“The well-publicised supply chain problems in the UK, particularly regarding the ‘pingdemic’ and driver shortages are currently causing us some short term availability issues," he said.

"Our suppliers and our depot network are working incredibly hard to try to recover from this temporary shortage of resource. In addition, we are in constant contact with our partners in the UK to make sure that stock levels get back to normal as quickly as possible and we can only apologise to our Members and Customers for our current availability issues.

"It is high volume categories where we have been impacted, primarily waters, crisps, cereals and biscuits. We expect availability on these lines to start recovering slowly from this week but this is dependent on a number of factors currently outside of our control."