‘Less food choice for consumers’ due to supply chain issues, says CCF
Speaking at a meeting of the Transport Select Committee, head of the Cold Chain Federation (CCF) Shane Brennan said suppliers are “scaling back” Christmas plans to ensure they can deliver.
Brennan explained that the industry was “making decisions about what they think is achievable” to deliver to the consumer in time for Christmas.
He said: “We are very good at piling high and selling it cheap at Christmas time. What we’re having to do is strategically scale that back, in order to basically meet the promise that there will be the stuff you expect to see on the shelves, but not necessarily all the extras.”
Brennan went on to say that there was a lot of “tiredness” in the industry and problems with retention as a result of the “toughest period in members’ memories” over the past few years.
“An unprecedented period of stress”
He added that global shipping supplies are in “an unprecedented period of stress.” Brennan went on to explain that global logistic issues were having a knock on effect on delivery times: “The containers that we need to move goods around the world are all in the wrong place. [..] In the fresh supply chain, you’d normally operate on ‘the same day’ or ‘next day’ delivery. We are now looking at ‘day two’ and ‘day three’ [delivery]. For frozen supply chains, we are looking at from ‘day one’ to ‘day three’, to ‘day one’ to ‘day five’ or ‘day six’.”
Brennan said that the CCF were seeing “significant changes” to suppliers’ delivery plans as they re-plan on the basis that delivery time frames have now been extended.
Scottish red meat industry releases plan to reach net zero by 2045
New housing measures introduced to protect poultry from bird flu
