Gas prices in the UK could trigger food shortages within weeks

Illinois-based CF Industries (BMPA CEO Nick Allen told the BBC on Saturday that he has been “inundated” with calls since the factories shut. “Retailers are really concerned about it,” he added.”This crisis highlights the fact that the British food supply chain is at the mercy of a small number of major fertilizer producers (four or five companies) spread across northern Europe,” Allen said in a statement.Underscoring the pressure on the industry, another European fertilizer producer, Norway’s Yara (“With fewer than 100 days to go until Christmas, and already facing mounting labor shortages, the last thing British poultry production needs is more pressure,” British Poultry Council CEO Richard Griffiths said in a statement.”This is no longer about whether Christmas will be okay, it’s about keeping the wheels turning and the lights on so that we can actually get to Christmas,” Richard Walker, managing director of supermarket chain Iceland Foods, told the BBC on Monday. “This is not an issue that’s months away.”UK natural gas prices jumped 420% on an annual basis in September, according to S&P Global Platts. Prices for gas are also rising sharply elsewhere in Europe, due to depleted stocks, competition with Asia for liquified natural gas and low supplies from Russia. But the problem is particularly acute in the United Kingdom, where the supply crunch has been exacerbated by a lack of large storage facilities and significantly lower UK production this year due to a heavy schedule of planned maintenance and delays to new projects, S&P Global Platts said in a research note last week.— Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.