UK representatives of food and retail importers have called for an urgent inquiry into the ongoing disruption at British ports, which has led to long delays to goods arriving and escalating freight prices.

Following several months of disruption at the UK’s largest container port Felixstowe (as pictured above) that has spread to other box import gateways, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have written to the chairs of key UK parliamentary committees asking them to investigate the causes and potential remedies for the current problems.

Their letter to Lilian Greenwood MP, Chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, and Angus Brendan MacNeil MP, Chair of the Commons International Trade Committee requesting “an urgent inquiry into the ongoing disruption at UK ports and across the shipping market”, noted that the impact of Covid-19 on global shipping schedules and the shipping workforce, along with a shortage of empty containers “has created significant disruption at many of the UK’s key ports in the crucial run up to Christmas”. This has meant retailers face “major challenges in building up stock for the Christmas period and for the end of the transition period at the end of December”.

For further reading LloydLoadingList reports.

Yesterday, Afloat reported of an Irish Oicheatas Committee on Transport and Communications Network and where the Irish Road Hauliers Association were to call for a single entity to take charge of the free movement of traffic from ports ahead of Brexit.