© RichardBakerWork/AlamyFrozen and chilled food warehouses are fully booked for the next six months.
Frozen and chilled food warehouses, storing everything from garden peas to half-cooked supermarket bread and cold-store potatoes, are fully booked for the next six months, with customers being turned away, industry representatives said.
"I started getting inquiries two to three months ago, but they reached fever pitch in the last 48 hours," Malcolm Johnstone, owner of Associated Cold Stores & Transport (ACST) said after the chaos in Westminster last week. "There has been a sea change since Wednesday."
He has capacity for 80,000 pallets in cold storage up and down the country and says food manufacturers and suppliers are desperate to get their stockpiling plans secured.
The bookings are not just for frozen foods such as peas and pizzas but food manufacturers such as crisp-makers who need a guaranteed supply of potatoes, normally put in cold storage. Overseas suppliers are also rushing for stores in the UK.
"I had a call the other week from a man from a Danish butter company who wanted to store 11,000 pallets of butter in the UK. We had to turn him away," said Johnstone.
"Normally butter would dribble into the UK food chain to meet demand, but these people are worried the supply chain will be interrupted and want stocks in the market before 29 March," he said.
Ian Wright, the chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation, said retailers were pressing ahead with contingency planning because it was prudent to do so.
"All the arithmetic seems to suggest that it will be impossible for the prime minister to get her deal through, so retailers and food manufacturers are continuing with contingency plans," he said.
Normally temperature-controlled warehouses are at their quietest in the months between Christmas and Easter but the fear of no-deal Brexit means they are now fully reserved in advance from January to April and beyond, explains the Food Storage and Distribution Federation (FSDF), which represents 350 warehouse owners and 75% of all commercially available frozen and chilled food warehouses in the country.
"It's a problem, because food is manufactured or stored on a just-in-time basis, and the system isn't built for stockpiling. But because of Brexit, every business that wants to guarantee its supply into UK shelves is looking for additional warehouse space right now," said Shane Brennan, the chief executive of the FSDF.
"Our members are operating at full capacity for the period January to April and beyond. It would normally be the quietest time of the year. They are effectively full now. They are turning customers away," said Brennan.
The Brexit warehouse shortage emerged as companies such as Premier Foods, which owns Bisto, Oxo and Mr Kipling and Ornua, the Irish company behind Kerrygold and many cheddar cheese brands, have announced plans for stockpiling.
Premier Foods said it expected to spend up to £10m on the preparations.
Wright said food manufacturing operations were also finding themselves having to get in on Brexit stockpiling.
"If you are making crisps, you need to make sure you have a supply of potatoes. You might normally be buying in ingredients on the futures market particularly if they are from outside the UK.Wright said the price of the chaos in Westminster was high for many in the British food business because if there was a deal companies would not get their contingency spending back.
"If you think your major supply route will be blocked for long periods of time, you will re-engineer your supply chains and people are scrambling round for warehousing now to get their ducks in a row," he said.
There have been reports of the government planning to commandeer shipping supplies in the event of no deal, but Brennan says the shortage of warehousing space is not a problem it can solve, as the business is high-cost.
"When it comes to storage, there is a finite number of warehouses and that is a problem that cannot be solved this side of Brexit. A large warehouse that can take 100,000 pallets costs tens of millions in investment and takes three years to build. Even smaller ones, with say capacity for 3,000 to 4,000 units take £2-3m investment. Even if we had the money you couldn't build them in time."
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