The yawning emptiness of supermarket shelves no longer bothers the British. Missing vegetables, restrictions on egg purchases or outstanding meat deliveries since the pandemic and Brexit are all too common. But the latest bottleneck is now hitting the English people’s minds a little harder. The drink, which according to former Prime Minister Winston Churchill is more important than ammunition and should therefore be available in unlimited quantities on his ship fleets to ensure the morale of the sailors, is becoming increasingly scarce.
The English company Tregothnan produces three million tea bags a year in its tea gardens in Cornwall, but this can only cover 0.02 percent of global demand.
“We are currently experiencing delivery problems with the nationwide supply of black tea,” said small information signs on the tea shelves of the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s last week. And British tea producer Tetley, which produces around 41 tonnes of tea bags a year, told the BBC: “At the moment it is much more scarce than we would like. We are quite confident that we can maintain supply levels, but we are aware that this is a critical phase that requires our constant attention.” And also Yorkshire Tea, which overtook Tetley in terms of production a few years ago and, according to PG Tips, now England’s is the second largest tea producer, is “keeping a close eye on the situation”.
Domestic production is negligible
Although tea, especially black tea, is the most consumed beverage after water in the United Kingdom, with 61 billion cups per year, and is closely linked to British culture through traditions such as cream tea or varieties such as English breakfast tea, there was until the turn of the millennium – when The Cornish estate of Tregothnan, with its conveniently located gardens, began consuming tea – not actually English tea.
The plant requires a (sub-)tropical climate: hot and humid. And so most tea today is produced in China, in the provinces of Yunnan, Guangdong and Zhejiang, or India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. The English company Tregothnan now produces three million tea bags a year in its tea gardens in Cornwall, but this can only cover 0.02 percent of global demand. And so Britain remains the fifth largest importer of unprocessed tea, which is blended and packaged in the country. The tea shipments from Asia are transported on container ships through the Red Sea.
But the area between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, which serves as access to the Suez Canal and through which around twelve percent of global trade passes, is currently experiencing disruptions. In November, Yemen’s Houthi rebels began attacking ships in and around the Red Sea. In retaliation for the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which was a result of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Around 55 percent of all container ships now avoid this body of water and prefer to take the route via the South African Cape of Good Hope. Due to the 6,400 kilometer detour, the journey from Asia to Europe not only takes up to two weeks longer, but is also likely to be one to two million euros more expensive.
Due to the 6,400 kilometer detour via South Africa, the tea’s journey from Asia to Europe takes up to two weeks longer.
Fear of panic buying
Even though the Sainsbury’s branches visited around London all still had tea packs, the shelves were significantly sparser than usual. And so Brits are already worried about whether shortages could lead to panic buying and, as the Daily Mail puts it, “devastation.” 61-year-old Kevin Ashton told Mail Online that he would be “devastated” if supermarkets ran out of tea bags. “I’ve been drinking tea since I was a baby – my mother even gave it to me in a bottle.” He doesn’t drink coffee or anything else – just tea; and twelve cups of it a day.
Also read:
Cravings: Where they come from and how we overcome them
The “passionate tea drinker” Christina was even willing to pay £230 for 15 packs of her favorite Tetley variety, including shipping costs, reports “Express”. “I drink six to eight cups of tea a day and my tea supply is running low,” she wrote on the Airtasker platform. For the time being, there still seems to be enough tea in the community. One user promptly replied that he could deliver 6,600 tea bags in a week.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, tries to calm things down: “The impact on consumers will be minimal. Retailers do not expect any major problems.” But Marco Forgione, director general of The Institute of Export and International Trade (IEIT), does not share this opinion. Tea, he told Reuters, is probably just “the first” of many items “to be affected by this supply chain crisis.” Several major British clothing retailers, including Next, Primark and Matalan, have already warned of the potential impact of disruption to deliveries across the Red Sea.
2024-03-05 12:56:50
#Brits #amused #Black #tea #danger #running #England
