British supermarkets battle to secure stocks as chaotic Brexit looms

By James Davey and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) – Britons could face shortages of fresh food at their supermarkets, price rises and less variety if the country leaves the European Union next month without agreeing on trade terms, food industry officials say.

With no deal in sight as Britain’s March 29 exit date approaches, supermarkets are stockpiling, working on alternative supplies and testing new routes to cope with an expected logjam at the borders but say they face insurmountable barriers.

“You can’t stockpile fresh produce, you haven’t got any space and it wouldn’t be fresh,” said Tim Steiner, head of online supermarket pioneer Ocado.

The warnings, including talk of whether rationing would be needed, are part of a chorus of concern from businesses who say they are weighed down by uncertainty in what was once considered a bastion of Western economic and political stability.

The last time Britain’s food supplies were seriously hit was when fuel protests prompted panic buying almost two decades ago, forcing some supermarkets to ration milk and bread and others to warn that stocks would run out in days.

Executives within the food chain said Britain was better prepared than 2000, but disruption may be more widespread and last longer than the few days it took before the fuel dispute was settled.

James Bielby, head of the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, says its members’ retail and catering customers were asking for between one and eight extra weeks’ supply. But storage is limited in an industry that operates on a “just in time basis” to maximize the shelf life of goods.

Intense competition and slim margins in the British supermarket sector have also made contingency planning more complicated. James Walton, chief economist at IGD which works with the industry to improve supply chains, said storage had been reduced over many decades to hold down working capital.

What remains is now full. “So surplus space within stores is being used and containers are in carparks,” he said.

Mike Coupe, the boss of Britain’s second biggest supermarket Sainsbury’s, said supplies would not last long. “We don’t have the capacity and neither does the country to stockpile more than probably a few days’ worth,” he said in January, echoing the supermarket’s warning to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000 during the fuel crisis.

FILE PHOTO: An employee operates a forklift to move goods at the Miniclipper Logistics warehouse in Leighton Buzzard, Britain December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: An employee operates a forklift to move goods at the Miniclipper Logistics warehouse in Leighton Buzzard, Britain December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo

LET THEM EAT LEEKS

Britain imports around half of its food, and while some is flown in via air freight, most enter on trucks through Dover, Britain’s main gateway to Europe.

At peak times, 130 trucks a day are required to drive through Dover bringing citrus fruit alone, according to the British Retail Consortium. In March, inclement British weather means 90 percent of lettuce comes from the EU.

If it leaves without a trade deal, Britain will move on to World Trade Organization rules that require tariffs to be paid, goods to be checked and paperwork to be completed, demands that do not currently exist for goods coming from within the EU.

The English Apples & Pears group said British farms have been asked to provide more apples until the end of April by retailers who usually source more from the southern hemisphere from March.

Other substitutions are more difficult.

“People just say we’ll eat more British produce but … would people be happy to start eating tonnes of British leeks? I’m not sure,” said an executive at one of Britain’s four major supermarket groups, who declined to be named because of the possible business impact.

“We have to plan for the worst,” he said, before adding that he hoped Britain would delay its departure date from the EU.

‘BUNKER LINES’

Consultants, suppliers, company sources and trade groups said importers were looking at securing new routes into Britain in case customs checks clog up Dover, but no other port offers that frequency of ferry sailings or trains through the tunnel.

They would also have to compete with companies importing drugs, car parts and chemicals that are also looking to alternative ports on the south and east coast of Britain.

The Spanish wine federation said they had advised members to avoid shipping goods to Britain around the end of March.

Supermarkets could fly in more goods – as they did to bring in lettuce from America in 2018 when bad weather hit European supplies – but it is expensive and capacity is limited.

William Bain, a policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, said clients and suppliers were having talks now to discuss how costs and risks would be shared if stock is delayed.

Elsewhere in the food chain, suppliers of TV dinners are considering changing ingredients to remove those with the shortest shelf life, according to the Fresh Produce Consortium.

All of these changes could lead to higher prices however, with changes to recipes requiring changes to labeling.

Dominic Goudie, in charge of exports, trade and supply chains at the Food and Drink Federation, told Reuters prices were likely to rise, regardless of the outcome.

“We know from our members that they are investing staggering sums into getting ready for the worst possible no-deal scenario,” he said. “The sums are so large that manufacturers need to pass it on to their customers, the retailers.”

Another senior executive at a major British food retailer told Reuters they had seen no signs yet of Britons buying so-called ‘bunker lines’ – toilet paper, bottled water and canned food. But it could happen before March 29.

“If you’ve got a limited amount of food, you want to distribute it fairly across the country,” he told Reuters. “So you almost get to this ridiculous notion of rationing.”

Some of Britain’s deeply-divided politicians who are seeking a complete break with the EU say the economy would soon recover from any short-term hit as it adapts to new trading routes after Brexit.

They argue that talk of food shortages and rationing is scaremongering driven by the government to rally support for Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal, agreed with the EU but showing little sign of getting sufficient support from her own parliament.

Environment minister Michael Gove, who backed Brexit, has said leaving without a deal could lead to higher prices, but that the government has chartered extra ferries to maintain the movement of goods. “We are meeting weekly with the food industry to support their preparations for leaving the EU,” a spokesman said.

Tesco chairman John Allan said the retailer, Britain’s biggest with 3,400 stores and almost 28 percent of the market, was stockpiling goods with a long shelf life but that its options for fresh produce was more limited.

“So provided we’re all happy to live on Spam and canned peaches all will be well,” he added.

(Writing by Kate Holton; additional reporting by Blanca Rodriguez Piedra in Madrid; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Philippa Fletcher)

In Puerto Rico, a new hurricane season threatens the elderly

An elderly woman prays at a chapel of the San Rafael nursing home in Arecibo, Puerto Rico February 14, 2018. Picture taken February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

By Nick Brown, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Ricardo Ortiz

ADJUNTAS, PUERTO RICO (Reuters) – At 84 years old and battling cancer, Israel Gonzalez Maldonado has lived without electricity for the nine months since Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

His wife, Zoraida Reyes, 77, struggles to keep the house stocked with fresh food without a refrigerator. At night, she fans her husband so he can sleep.

With another hurricane season starting, older Puerto Ricans have little to protect them from another storm on an impoverished island that remains far from fully recovered. Younger and wealthier people have been moving away for years, leaving an older and sicker population in the hands of an underfunded healthcare system. Tens of thousands more have fled since Maria.

“We wish we could move, at least for the time he has left,” Reyes said of her husband.

Senior citizens make up a larger share of the population here than in all but four U.S. states, according to federal Census data. About half are disabled, more than any state.

Forty percent of seniors rely on food stamps, more than three times the percentage in New York state, the second-highest nationally.

Yet the island has just six nursing homes – with a total of 159 beds – that are certified by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to provide rehabilitative services.

Puerto Rico relies instead on a patchwork of about 800 nursing homes licensed by the island’s Department of Family. They are typically private businesses or nonprofit organizations that care for small numbers of elderly people with limited services – and limited budgets, strained further since Maria.

A fragile healthcare system is hardly the only problem that leaves the elderly here – and all Puerto Ricans – vulnerable to another catastrophic storm.

About 7,000 houses and businesses still lack power, after Maria leveled a grid that was ill-maintained before the storm. Power utility PREPA has patched together most of the system but remains years away from making the fundamental improvements needed to enable it to withstand another hurricane.

“The grid needs to be rebuilt – not just the lines,” PREPA Chief Executive Walter Higgins said.

Maria also damaged nearly half the island’s levees. Several major water pumps, used to remove floodwater, remain in disrepair.

“God help us, but we definitely can’t handle any more hurricanes,” said Tania Vazquez, the island’s secretary of natural resources.

Governor Ricardo Rossello’s office declined to comment on the island’s hurricane preparedness or on specific efforts to protect the elderly, referring questions to other agencies.

Glorimar Andujar, Secretary of the Department of Family, said officials learned a lot from Maria about how to prepare for the next storm.

“The emergency plans are much better,” Andujar said, “because we now have an experience that no other generation of agency leaders have experienced.”

ELDERLY AT RISK

Rosa Iturrizaga runs Hostal de Amigos, a small eldercare residence in San Juan.

The home barely broke even before Maria, relying on resident fees of between $2,000 and $3,000 a month. Since then, two of 11 residents moved to the mainland, and insurance has so far not paid for about $40,000 in storm damage, Iturrizaga said. The business carries $500,000 in debt, has fallen behind on loan and tax payments and now loses up to $5,000 a month.

“I don’t know what’s kept me going,” Iturrizaga said. “I love doing this, but I’m looking at other things to do with the land.”

Another private home, the nonprofit Asilo San Rafael in Arecibo, theoretically charges residents $1,200 a month; in reality, only three of 27 residents pay full price, and at least nine pay nothing, said board member Lucila Oliver.

Operating costs run about $700,000 annually, with about $110,000 coming from a handful of subsidies from the island’s central government – subsidies she says have declined sharply in recent years as the now-bankrupt Puerto Rican government fell into a fiscal crisis, Oliver said.

The Department of Family’s Andujar disputed that the subsidies have declined, but Oliver provided Reuters with balance sheets showing a drop in department funding to $59,000 this fiscal year from $80,000 last year.

Maria brought new costs: about $1,200 a month to bring in water tanks, and thousands more on diesel for generators. Oliver said San Rafael is “used to living on the edge,” but says the edge has drawn closer since the hurricanes.

Many elderly and disabled here find a way to get by at home, with little care. Some seek help from the Department of Family, applying for a caregiver to come by just a day or two a week, said Andujar.

Many are turned away, she said.

“The funding is very limited,” she said, “and the need is very big.”

PREPARING FOR ANOTHER HIT

This hurricane season, the department is making sure it has accurate locations for all licensed nursing homes after cell phone service disruptions stymied the response to Hurricane Maria. The homes, Andujar said, are now required to have 30 days of food on hand, and the department has also requested they have generators and water tanks.

She added that about 315,000 elderly people currently receive benefits as part of a $1.27 billion federal allocation under the Nutritional Assistance Program.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) remains on the island and said it has given municipalities money to improve community resilience.

Dr. Carmen Sanchez Salgado, Puerto Rico’s ombudsmen for the elderly, said her staff has been educating elderly people about the emergency supplies they need.

Charities and nonprofits have also helped. The nonprofit PRxPR, created in response to Maria, is funding solar panels for elderly people and community centers.

One such center in Naguabo had no power as recently as four weeks ago, said Carmen Baez, the group’s co-founder.

“Our installation was it,” she said.

(Reporting by Nick Brown, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Ricardo Ortiz; Additional reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Daniel Bases and Brian Thevenot)