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No water, milk in London: Grocery shelves go empty, Covid is one of the reasons
"We had already decided to reduce our stock because of Covid... but now we're finding it hard to get some products as well because they're just not available," Patel said.
The British economy has plunged into a major supply chain crisis, with a wide range of businesses suffering shortages for several months in the UK now. The worst hit by this are the grocery stores which are seeing empty shelves for things as basic as water and milk, multiple news agencies have reported. "Last week I ran out of Coca-Cola. I haven't had large bottles of Evian for three weeks," the news agency quoted Satyan Patel, owner of a convenience store, as saying.
"We had already decided to reduce our stock because of Covid... but now we're finding it hard to get some products as well because they're just not available," Patel said.
The coronavirus pandemic severely disrupted the global supply chain, but Britain's exit from the European Union late last year has further exacerbated the problems. The UK withdrew from the European Union in January 2020 after 47 years of having been a member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Communities (EC).
Following the exit, shops in the UK are not getting products delivered to them, as the deal between the country and EU has made it harder to hire EU citizens. This has led to a drastic shortage of lorry drivers. Meanwhile, many people have not yet returned to the UK after going back to their home countries during the Covid-induced lockdown last year.
Co-op, a cooperative supermarket group, said it was "impacted by some patchy distribution" to its deliveries but it was working with suppliers to re-stock quickly. The group said it was recruiting 3,000 temporary workers "to keep depots working to capacity and stores stocked as quickly as possible". At another major supermarket in southeast London, water bottles were sparse and milk was missing from shelves.
According to recent estimates, the UK currently faces a shortage of about 100,000 lorry drivers, AFP has reported.
(With AFP inputs)
