The UK government has been told the nation faces a possible summer of serious disruption to food supplies unless it acts immediately to address an acute shortage of HGV drivers. Recruitment problems have been building since early April.
On Monday, at a meeting chaired by David Kennedy – the director general for Food Farming and Biosecurity at DEFRA – 60 representatives of companies across the food industry detailed the stress that supply lines are under. According to a number of participants on the Teams call, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Co-op Food urged the government to take action.
Craig Taylor, the Group Logistics Director at Morrisons, said that hauliers were “struggling” to deliver and that the volume of goods coming into the supermarket’s depots had fallen by 7.5% in June. He described the southeast and southwest of England as “major hotspots”.
Asda’s Head of Logistics Chris Hall said it has become “incredibly difficult” to source agency lorry drivers, that costs were being driven up and that the problem of missed deliveries was “getting worse not better”.
Source: itv.com
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