Mars UK apologises to customers for ‘significant challenges’ to haulage capacity

Major suppliers including Pilgrim Foods, Quorn, Addo Food Group and Warburtons have axed best-selling lines in response to the labour crisis in production and distribution.

Symbol group messages to stores outlined how suppliers were reducing their range in response to staffing challenges.

Pilgrims Food Masters cut production of Richmond Thin 340g and Richmond Thick 205g lines last week and capped orders on Mattessons Honey Roast Ham 250g, Cooked Ham 250g and Cooked Ham 100g lines for two weeks.

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Quorn’s lasagne, tikka massala and cottage-pie ready meals were all “temporarily delisted” with no notice given of when production would restart.

Addo Food Group’s Walls Cornish Pasty is also out for “at least three weeks”, also due to “labour challenges”.

Brexit-backer Warburtons also announced it was “resting” 10 lines until mid-January to protect key line availability over Christmas.

The lines to be temporarily discontinued are 400g Premium Brown, 400g Weight Watchers Thick Wholemeal, Country White, 800g White Bloomer, 800g Half and Half Thick, 400g White Farmhouse, 400g Premium Wholegrain Oat, 400g Fruit Loaf with Orange, four square sandwich rolls and five Sesame Bagels.

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Widespread outages were also reported by stores across Mars Petcare and Mars Wrigley lines. A Mars UK spokesperson said: “Like many suppliers, we have encountered significant challenges to our haulage capacity and are continuing to see problems with labour shortages in some of our warehousing operations. These well documented supply chain disruptions across Britain have adversely impacted our customer service levels in recent months.

“For this, we are profoundly sorry to our customers and for the inconvenience caused. We are clear that our service levels must improve and are investing significant resources to make the interventions required to ensure we can increase capacity to meet our customer demand.”

Read more about the labour crisis