Yahoo Finance Veganuary at risk as brands battle supply chain shortages
When Brooke Williams visited his local Greggs store in the middle of November, he was disappointed to see it had run out of vegan sausage rolls.
Days later, and undeterred, Cardiff-based Williams tried again at a different store - and again, and again.
“How is the nationwide shortage of Greggs’ vegan sausage rolls not getting more media attention?” he vented online, as one of a flurry of disgruntled customers taking to Twitter over the missing baked goods.
“It’s really starting to get to me,” wrote another user. “This might be the worst thing that’s happened to me all year,” a third said.
Missing vegan items on shelves is something experts warn could become more common. While Greggs worked through its specific supply chain block, vegan food makers are scrambling to keep up with expected demand during their busiest month of the year - January.
“Veganuary has really taken off as an event,” says Quorn’s marketing director Gill Riley. “It’s almost become this New Year, New You lifestyle kick.”
Customer appetite is expected to be significant. Last year, almost 600,000 people registered to take part in Veganuary, compared to 400,000 in 2020 and around 250,000 the year before.
According to Kantar, 10 times more people actually take part in Veganuary than those registered, indicating more than 5m tried going vegan at the beginning of 2021. “With the climate crisis being at the forefront of everyone’s mind this year we expect the number [of people taking part] to be even higher,” charity Veganuary says.
Yet meeting this high demand may not be an easy task. Supply chain disruption has been ripping across the UK’s food and drink sector with warnings over meat and alcohol shortages dominating headlines going into the Christmas period - and vegan food makers have not been immune.
“They’re facing all of the same supply problems,” he says, including labour issues, transporting items across the country and coping with spiralling wage inflation. “All of that is really tricky for lots of vegan food companies.”
While Weston admits it is always hard to keep up with a spike in requests for vegan produce come January, he says it could be even tougher this year.
There have already been signs that pressures are mounting. Major vegan brands have issued warnings over higher costs. Alternative milk producer Oatly, for instance, said it was facing steep logistics and shipping costs, recording a $1m (£760,000) hit from the HGV driver shortage in the UK.
Vegan meat maker Beyond Meat, meanwhile, pointed to increased transportation costs and higher warehousing costs. Its shares are down almost 60pc in the past six months.
Small firms face worst blow
But Weston says smaller companies are likely to be piled under even more pressure.
While large businesses can “absorb a temporary price increase in some of their key inputs and can afford not to pass it along to retail partners”, smaller and medium sized companies cannot, he says. “They’re also the first to be dropped by key suppliers because the Nestles or Unilevers of the world will buy up all the available supply of an ingredient.”
Disruption is starting to feed across into supermarkets. For years more space has been set aside for vegan options, with a fifth of ready meals sold by UK supermarkets being plant-based or vegetarian last summer.
Yet Chantelle Adkins from the Vegan Society says labour woes have meant certain product lines have been pulled from factories, while shipping turmoil has resulted in fewer American-branded vegan items making it over to the UK. “Actually, I’d say we haven't seen fully stocked shelves since the pre-pandemic days.”
Ultimately, what this means is that vegans or those trying out veganism may struggle to find everything they’re after.
While some options are vanishing from shelves, other vegan food companies say they are confident in getting items into supermarkets.
Stockpiling may save Veganuary
British plant-based meat alternative company THIS says it has been stockpiling its sausages, meatballs and chicken in preparation for a busy January.
“We’ve learnt that we really need to hunker down and get ourselves ready for the tidal wave of demand that seems to come in January,” says co-founder Andy Shovel.
“Six or nine months ago, things were fairly disgusting in terms of the magnitude of challenges that we were facing. But, what we've done now since summer is volume-load, so make products and then store them frozen ready for retailers, because we knew Veganuary was looming.”
Quorn, too, has been undertaking “careful planning”, and readying stocks to make sure it has enough going into the busiest weeks of the vegan calendar.
Efforts are perhaps more rigorous than usual. Quorn was, after all, the supplier for the Greggs vegan sausage rolls and had faced a “short term supply issue” to get the filling to the baker.
Still, marketing director Riley seems upbeat. “We don’t think there’ll be any shortages at all. At the end of the day, we want to make sure we're able to have our products available to make that transition to vegan as easy as possible for people.”
People shifting towards more plant-based diets are one thing. But Williams, a vegetarian for 36 years and a vegan for three, is more eager than most that Quorn delivers on its ambition.
He says that “being vegan, there isn’t much choice when it comes to a quick savoury snack”. And when already limited items aren’t on the shelves, many people notice - and fast.
