Most people love a bit of milk in their tea or coffee in the morning.
However, Brits have been warned about a ‘summer of disruption’ when it comes to milk supplies, due to lorry driver shortages.
Arla, UK’s biggest dairy supplier, was unable to deliver to hundreds of stores last week, according to The Independent.
Shoppers could now face issues getting milk in-store if the government does not act to address a shortage of lorry drivers, the boss of the UK’s biggest dairy supplier has said.
Arla supplies milk to about 2,400 stores each day in the UK. The company said it was unable to deliver to 600 stores last Saturday due to dwindling driver numbers.
Ash Amirahmadi, Arla UK managing director, said that the supplier has regularly struggled to deliver to one in ten stores in recent weeks.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think when you are not able to supply 10% of the stores which are expecting to get milk every day, I think that’s quite worrying for a customer walking into a store and not being able to have milk – so we are taking it very seriously.
“We are trying to avoid a summer of disruption.
“We are experiencing the problem getting worse and that’s why our assessment is that we are in a driver shortage crisis, and therefore we are asking for the industry and government to work together to recognise we are in a crisis and address the issue.”
Arla says its third-party hauliers have raised wages to try and entice drivers to the job, while it has also offered a £2,000 signing-on bonus.
It comes after Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, announced a £1,000 joining bonus for new drivers who sign up before September to help address its shortages.
However, Mr Amirahmadi said there also needed to be a “structural solution” from the government. He said there needs to be improvements to Covid testing and temporary visa changes, to resolve the shortage in the short-term.
“Going into the summer with lots more holidays coming up there is a short-term crisis, [and] we need to make sure we don’t have food shortages in the summer,” he said.
“There is a backlog of tests for HGV drivers – we predict about 30,000 drivers are waiting to be tested.
“We want government to work with us to accelerate that. And secondly, we believe that driving should be recognised as a skill shortage, and therefore they should open up temporary visas for the industry to be able to bring European drivers back into the country.”
The news comes after supermarket shoppers were warned shelves could be empty for months due to a ‘collapse’ in the supply chain.
Many shoppers have noticed low stock and essential items missing across supermarket shelves, causing speculation over the impact of a mixture of Brexit and the ‘pingdemic’.
Industry bosses have now warned empty shelves could carry on if the current staff crisis isn’t solved.
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