Arla boss calls for ‘structural solution’ to help driver shortage

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The UK’s biggest dairy company Arla has warned of a summer shortage of fresh dairy milk, urging the Government to act in order to avoid a “summer of disruption”. Arla failed to make 25 percent of its deliveries to supermarkets last weekend due to the persistent shortage of drivers that hit the UK due to the combination of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to business correspondent Emma Simpson from the BBC, managing director from Arla Food, Ash Amirahmadi, said the company normally supplies 2,400 stores a day but on Saturday they could not deliver to 600 stores.

He said: “So normally we deliver milk to 2400 stores daily, so we’re a very big milkman.

“Unfortunately, at the moment there’s about 10 percent of the stores every day that we can’t deliver to. And at the weekend it’s worse.

“This is the world’s largest fresh milk dairy. We’ve processed over 2 billion litres of milk from our farmer-owners. So you can see this is a fast operation.”

Mr Amirahmadi emphasised: “In fact, one in every five bottles of milk that’s sold in the UK is made here.

“Since the beginning of April, we have experienced driver shortages. And that has now increased to such a level now where we’re not able to deliver milk to every store that we’d like to.

“That’s a lot of milk and it’s very worrying for customers when they go into shops. It’s not just milk, is an industry issue, but it’s very worrying for customers when they find that the shelves are empty.”

A combination of Brexit and the pandemic has exacerbated a national shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers.

According to the Road Haulage Association, there is currently a shortfall of about 100,000 lorry drivers.

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Mr Amirahmadi said: “Going into the summer with lots more holidays coming up, there’s a short term crisis that we need to make sure that we don’t have food shortages in the summer and therefore we would like to work with the Government first to recognise it’s a crisis.

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