A bottleneck at the UK’s main commercial port raised fears on Wednesday that the country could face a slew of shortages during the key Christmas shopping season, including toys and food.
Worries have grown in recent weeks that the UK’s economic recovery is being hampered by widespread shortages, as evidenced by long lineups at gas stations and bare grocery shelves.
The interruption is abundantly obvious at Felixstowe, the UK’s largest commercial port, in east England. A dearth of drivers has caused a container backlog at the port, which handles 36% of UK freight container volumes, prompting shipping major Maersk to divert some of its largest boats.
The United Kingdom has a “major pressure point” around truck drivers and the demand for them to deliver products from ports, according to Peter Wilson, managing director of Cory Brothers shipping firm.
He told BBC radio, “That’s a tremendously major issue for us here in the UK.”
When asked if it will have an impact on Christmas, he acknowledged it “might,” but added that the supply chain “will not break down in the United Kingdom.”
However, he warned that some things, such as toys and food, might not be accessible closer to Christmas.
While other countries have experienced major delays, Britain is currently experiencing particularly severe difficulties, with the number of truck drivers, in particular, being drastically reduced. Although the causes are numerous, it is evident that the combination of Britain’s divorce from the European Union and the pandemic prompted many EU workers to leave the United Kingdom and return home.
The shortages come at a time when, despite the widespread relaxation of coronavirus restrictions, the economic recovery is already losing steam, as supply chain concerns have taken their toll.
The economy grew modestly in August, according to the Office of National Statistics, as bars, restaurants, and festivals benefited from the first full month without coronavirus restrictions in England, but the 0.4 percent increase was smaller than expected. As a result of worse statistics from a variety of industries, the agency revised down July’s figure from a 0.1 percent increase to a 0.1 percent decline, illustrating the turbulent character of the economic recovery.
Earlier this year, it was expected that the British economy would have recovered all of its COVID-19-related losses by the end of the year, but this is no longer the case, given the recent loss of momentum and rising supply chain concerns. The British economy remained 0.8 percent below its pre-coronavirus pandemic level of February 2020 as of the end of August.
Rising prices, low productivity, more taxes, and an unclear COVID-19 background heading into winter are all expected to slow growth in the next months.
The International Monetary Fund predicted that the United Kingdom will grow by 6.8% this year, more than any other Group of Seven industrial countries, and by a still-high 5% next year, according to the IMF. The British economy, on the other hand, had the worst recession of all G-7 nations in 2020, shrinking by 9.8%.
