Blendly commercial coffee marketplace creates transparent access to fresh coffee production via our scalable production facility, giving the global coffee consumer opportunities to transmit greater economic and social value in their coffee blends.
Blendly allows your coffee blends to be developed, shared and redistributed across multiple sales channels giving your brand and its values a wider audience. Blendly also enables your brand to have automation support and management as your coffee reputation grows.
Blendly marketplace allows sustainable and transparent access to fresh coffee production for the global coffee consumer by giving them transparent access to the components that make up their everyday cup of coffee.
Many customers are noticing shortages in their everyday lives this is due to the current supply chain – which has been affected in light of the three critical challenges facing global supply chains: labour shortages, equipment availability, and the ripple effect of global bottlenecks
As highlighted in a recent Investment Monitor report After months of shortages – first, on supermarket shelves and later at the fuel pumps – the UK’s food supply chains are set to be a somewhat unconventional discussion point at many a Christmas table, given that concerns are being voiced over the availability of some of the traditional favourites. As the UK enters 2022 with uncertainty still clouding Brexit and a new Covid-19 variant spreading, consumers are likely to continue to suffer the brunt of food supply chain
disruptions.
The trifecta of Covid-19, Brexit and labour shortages has turned the weekly shop into an endurance test for many. According to a survey conducted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), 17% of buyers could not find essential food items they needed on a weekly basis on 10-18 November. The percentage went up to 24% for “other food items”.
Between the weeks starting 8 September 2021 and 8 November 2021, an average of 42.5% of buyers did not find everything they needed, from essential food items to fuel and medicine. These food supply chain disruptions are not just for Christmas, however. Indeed, 2022 comes with its own set of additional hoops to jump through to avoid further food supply chain disruptions.
In January 2022, full custom controls will be introduced as part of the UK’s exit from the EU, which Bielby expects to prove challenging. Covid-19 will continue to be an issue, he adds, saying: “We don’t know what is going to happen with the various strains. There are going to be more lockdowns, and more restrictions on the economy, which is clearly going to cause problems as well.
“The problems are only going to get worse. We are going to see a lot of inflation and we are going to see continuous shortages of labour.”
To future-proof the UK’s food supply chains, Bielby says that the government could go some way towards plugging the skills shortage by helping with incentives and creating temporary visas of at least 12–24 months. He also stresses that the border problems relating to Northern Ireland are likely to remain problematic.
For Patel, securing UK supply chains requires a “two-pronged approach”. “First, improving efficiency by increasing automation [from farms to factories], and by using technology to drive more accurate forecasting to reduce waste through the value chain,” he says.
“Second, attracting and retaining workers, which is partly about pay but also about improving conditions and making food and drink an attractive place to work.”
In the short term, it seems like consumers will have to “deal with slightly less choice than they are used to, as well as price increases driven by broader input cost inflation”, concludes Patel.
Experts and industry bodies have been voicing their concerns for some time now, and few seem satisfied that the UK will enter the first few months of 2022 with strong and reliable food supply chains. Indeed, the additional Brexit-induced hurdles on the horizon mean that the issues will likely get worse before they get better.