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

Sainsbury’s will increase supplies of British-grown tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers, as fears swirl of drought affecting crops imported from overseas.

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

The deals are intended to ensure that Sainsbury’s can keep a steady supply of salad essentials in stock.

Tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers have been badly affected by weather in the past.

In early 2023, supermarkets imposed limits on how many of the items – as well as lettuce, salad bags and some other vegetables – customers could buy.

That came after a combination of bad weather and related transport problems in Europe and north Africa led to widespread shortages in the UK.

Sainsbury’s said that British-grown tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are already an important part of its salad offering to customers.

However, extreme weather across warmer growing regions had underlined the need for supermarkets to think differently about how they build more resilient supply chains.

Sainsbury’s said that it hoped its long-term agreement 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 glasshouse complex.

There, supplementary lighting, heat, and CO2 are managed to create the conditions that cucumber plants need to keep growing through the darkest months of the year.

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

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

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

“By giving our brilliant British growers the certainty to invest and innovate through long-term contracts such as these with Thanet Earth and Evesham Vale Growers will help us to 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 ahead with more certainty and keep pushing what’s possible for British growing.

“A good example is our investment in the technology needed to grow cucumbers through the winter, creating the right conditions for the crop and helping bring more British-grown produce to customers at a time of year when that has not previously been possible.”