- Title: 252 GB COVID-19 Flour shortage
- Date: 24th April 2020
- Description:Wessex mills increases production but cannot keep up with flour demand during COVID-19 pandemic Flour is a very demanded good in the UK, at the supermarket flour shelves are regularly empty and small bakeries stopped to sell flour, to have enough for themselves to bake bread and cakes for their customers. Our correspondent visited a small family run mill in Wessex, they now produce now more small bags of flour in day, than normally in a week; for packing they run 24 hours shifts. They also had to find new staff, as some employees had to go to self-isolation. Emily Munsey who runs the family business Wessex mill says more and more people are at home, they started to bake bread, or pulled out their bread maker and therefore the demand for small bags flour increased and they hardly can meet it. Shotlist -MS Wessex Mill plant -VS Packed flour ready to be shipped SOUNDBITE (English) Emily Munsey, Owner of Wessex Mill: "So we lost a fair number of staff, they needed to self-isolate, but we were really lucky to employ locals who live in walking distance to fill in their jobs. We are producing a lot more small bags, the big bags for bakeries is fairly steady if not maybe slightly lower than we normally expect. But the small packs, the demand we cant keep up at all" -SOUNDBITE (English) Emily Munsey, Wessex Mill: We increased production of small bags by 6 times now, so we now sending out daily more than we used to send out in a week. And running 24 hours on the mill for up to 3 days a week, but always 24 hours packing now, it´s been difficult transition. But we are doing OK. -SOUNDBITE (English) Emily Munsey, Wessex Mill: A lot of the flour we eat in the UK , has traditionally come through both fast food chains and restaurants, so the sandwich you buy out at your lunch break all that, every one has stopped doing, so now everybody is baking at home, many people but not all have more time or they have a bread maker pulled out at the back of cupboard. So we now want to consume our flour in small bags rather than big bags. The problem being, that as a country we have a very low capacity of packing small bags. Only four percent of the flour is traditionally in a small bag, even the big mills, we are a very small mill, do not have capacity to pack small bags of flour. -VS Machine milling -C/U Packed flour -VS Packing machine -C/U Machine labeling the packs -GVs Small packs of flour
- Collection: ORF
- Genre:News
- Producer:ORF
- Transmission Date:24/04/2020
- Decade: 2020s