Retailers warn of Christmas supply disruption amid worker shortages

Major retailers including Tesco and Iceland have warned of the disruption to supermarket supplies as the industry grapples with a shortage of lorry drivers following the impact of the coronavirus crisis and post-Brexit immigration rules. 

It comes days after fast-food giant McDonald’s was forced to stop selling milkshakes and bottled drinks following a lack of supply, while Greggs said yesterday its menu was being impacted by similar disruption. 

Iceland managing director Richard Walker cautioned that Christmas could be “cancelled” again this year as a result of driver shortages. He said the grocer was already having 30 to 40 deliveries cancelled every day as a result of the crisis.  

Walker called on the government to recruit drivers from abroad to avoid further problems in the run-up to Christmas, but warned it would take “four to six weeks” to recruit enough drivers.

Walker told the BBC: “We’ve got Christmas around the corner and in retail we start to stock build really from September onwards, for what is a hugely important time of year.

“We’ve got a lot of goods to transport between now and Christmas and a strong supply chain is vital for everyone. The reason for sounding the alarm now is that we’ve already had one Christmas cancelled at the last minute and I’d hate this one to be problematic as well.”

Tesco chair John Allan admitted there would be “some shortages” in certain product categories during the crucial golden quarter, but encouraged customers not to panic buy. Allan said: “It’s very easy to make a drama out of a modest crisis.”

Kieran Smith, the boss of recruitment agency Driver Require, revealed that 50,000 UK-based drivers had left the profession since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, while Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, called on the government to “broaden its horizons” when recruiting drivers from overseas.

CBI director-general Tony Danker added that labour shortages had extended beyond HGV drivers. He said the number of butchers, construction workers, engineers and IT specialists had all fallen. 

Danker called on the government to add more positions to its skilled immigrants list in order to increase the number of overseas workers in the UK.