Supply Chain Disruption

Supply chain disruption

We feel it both urgent and necessary to bring to your attention the on-going issues over the short supply of Poultry and other key lines from across Europe into the UK. Thus having a further impact on the Home market with suppliers trying to backfill with UK poultry, which is already oversubscribed due to the good weather with retail demand.

Rest assured we are working tirelessly to do everything possible through these troubled times to try and fulfil all your orders, however please note the situation is only getting worse day by day and will impact the volumes more so on poultry for your order fulfilment. Please give as much lead time as possible when placing orders.

We expect the impact of short supply to last between 10-12 weeks and please note a finished bird is ready from hatching in 30 days.

The main reasons for the chronic shortages across the supply chain are as follows

  • Poland, the largest supplier of  European Poultry into  UK, has had an outbreak of Avian flu that resulted in the slaughter of over 20 million chickens last week alone to try and reduce the threat of further spreading. The disease is now widespread across Europe with France culling over 10 million ducks over the last 3 weeks and Poland a further 15 million.
  • The pandemic has seen a significant increase of people in lockdown at home eating more poultry, pork and turkey across Europe putting pressure on the export markets to reduce volume going to other countries; none more so on thigh meat and small size chicken fillets.
  • The cost of feed has increased by over 10% in the last 3 months driving farmers to finish larger birds versus smaller birds, thus putting extreme pressure on the smaller size fillets such as 5/6oz. In most cases suppliers have zero stock of what was a standard size fillet available to the market.
  • The number of Bank holidays across Poland and Holland in Europe in the coming weeks means the further loss of production days in a very tight market.
  • Since Brexit, exporters across all protein into the UK are failing to “back haul back to their home countries” due to the lack of exports from the UK thus driving up the price of all proteins none more so than poultry and pork.
  • Suppliers of poultry are now limiting supply lines into the UK with every delivery being short and in most cases up to 40% of the order, depending on the products being delivered.
  • The easing of Covid regulations with the outside dining has put demands on what were already very tight markets for poultry and pork, driven by reduced menus centred around poultry. This will be further compounded once the next easing on the 17th May for inside dining opens

Glenn Eastwood
Managing Director