Sainsbury’s strikes deal with British salad producers to tackle food shortage fears

Sainsbury’s will increase its supply of British-grown tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers amid fears drought will affect crops imported from overseas.

The supermarket, the UK’s second largest, has signed new 10-year partnerships with UK producers Thanet Earth and Eversham Vale Growers.

The deals are aimed at ensuring Sainsbury’s salad ingredients remain consistently in stock.

In the past, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers were negatively affected by weather conditions.

In early 2023, supermarkets introduced limits on the number of items customers could purchase, along with lettuce, salad bags and some other vegetables.

This comes after bad weather and associated transport problems in Europe and North Africa led to widespread famine in the UK.

Sainsbury’s said British-grown tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers were already a key part of its salad offering to customers.

But extreme weather conditions in warm growing regions have highlighted the need for supermarkets to think differently about how to create more resilient supply chains.

Sainsbury’s said it hoped the long-term deal with Thanet Earth would extend the availability of British cucumbers beyond the summer season into the winter months for the first time.

The new British winter crop will be grown at Thanet Earth in Kent, the UK’s largest single-site greenhouse complex.

Here, supplemental lighting, heat and CO2 are managed to create the conditions cucumber plants need to continue growing during the darkest months of the year.

Sainsbury’s said the benefits of the deals would be seen on shelves as early as this summer with the launch of its new Taste the Difference British Salad Selection 800g box.

“With our changing weather patterns, it’s more important than ever to find new, innovative solutions to ensure our customers can continue to enjoy the quality products they want all year round,” said Hannah O’Reilly, product category director at Sainsbury’s.

“Investing further in British manufacturing and supporting our suppliers to innovate is helping us build a stronger, more resilient supply chain in a category that has been affected by weather shocks in recent years.

“Giving our brilliant British growers the certainty to invest and innovate through long-term contracts such as those with Thanet Earth and Evesham Vale Growers will help us continue to support British farming for years to come.”

Rob James, technical director at Thanet Earth, said: “Working with Sainsbury’s in this way means we can plan more precisely going forward and continue to push what is possible for British growth.

“Our investment in the technology required to grow cucumbers over winter is a good example of this, creating the right conditions for the crop and helping to make more British grown produce available to customers at a time of year when this was not previously possible.”