The leafy salad sector has endured a second week of struggle. Supply remains drastically tight and large volumes of product have been imported by airfreight to meet demand.
“The position is desperate,” said David Piccaver, chairman of the British Leafy Salads Association. “We are expecting it to improve with more plentiful supplies next week, but it is very difficult to meet demand.”
Heavy rainfall in Spain has abated this week but not before seriously disrupting supplies. Withdrawal of product from the supply chain following the discovery of glass in consignments sourced by Intercrop two weeks ago added to the shortfall.
And Piccaver said that there was also difficulty in getting sufficient product from the US to cope with the gaps in the UK marketplace. “They have some problems meeting the demands of the UK market in terms of the chemical inputs they use,” said Piccaver, below. “But people have got to cover their orders and so not surprisingly raw material is running very expensive.”
No uplift in prices paid by major customers has been reported, however, although if the situation is sustained it is arguable whether the industry could sustain the losses.
Andrew Brown, business development manager at Christian Salvesen, contractor for BA Perishables Handling Centre at Heathrow, has reported significant uplift in airfreighted volumes of lettuce from the US.
“In a 48-hour period over the weekend, we handled 50 tonnes of iceberg and Romaine hearts from California when normally we wouldn’t be doing any at this time of year,” said Brown. “And imports have still been coming in in large volumes through the week. Not as heavily as when Spain was affected by frosts two years ago, but still significant.”
The other issue is that when Spanish product does start to come back on stream, quality may be affected. “There has been so much rainfall that growers have had trouble harvesting,” said Piccaver.
The mild weather in the UK recently may well bring the English crop on early in the next few weeks and if Spain has righted itself by then, the southern European growers may have a difficult end of season to add to their woes.
Meanwhile, Soleco UK has found low levels of salmonella in samples from a batch of Lambs Lettuce recalled from sale at the end of last week.
A total of 610 of Florette 100 per cent Lambs Lettuce 80g bags were recalled as a precautionary measure and subsequent testing found levels so low as not to be any danger to human health.
The company insisted the measure was purely precautionary. “This small potential risk was found to be limited to one isolated batch of salad product,” managing director Mark Newton said. It involved bags packed in 42 cases and distributed in the Channel Islands, Lancashire and North Lincolnshire through Booths, Nisa, Forest Stores, Le Riche Stores, Robinson, Checkers Superstore, Safeway, Co-op St Helier and Co-op Guernsey.
“Our continuous, rigorous quality-testing programme identified a small chance of potential contamination in part of this batch,” said Newton. “Although the risk was very low, we immediately triggered a withdrawal of the entire batch from retail outlets and the distribution chain. Ensuring the highest quality standards is our number one priority, which is why we have taken this precautionary measure.”
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