It will come as no surprise that COVID-19 has had a great impact on food supply chains. The (hopefully) short-term impacts of the pandemic have caused significant disruptions in all aspects of processors’ supply chains. But what do processors see as their most pressing problems?
In our survey of 240 processors and subsequent interviews, four major areas dominated their concerns – availability of raw materials, transportation and delays, operating supplies, and prices.
Access to sufficient raw materials was a clear number one concern. The availability of raw material was a fundamental concern, but, with shortages driving the need to look to alternate suppliers, processors also reported significant concerns with product quality – especially due to the quality of available substitutes. A number of companies reported to us that they were finding more non-compliant material being delivered.
The second most mentioned category of concern involved transportation and delays, either due to infrastructure issues such as the closure of ports, of the availability of trucks and/or the availability of drivers to operate them. These issues were shown to be causing significant bottlenecks in logistics, with this causing a concern for other fundamental food safety practices, such as temperature control.
See what else food processors reported to us in our article in the Oct/Nov issue of Food Safety Magazine – available here.