Tesco is currently experiencing a shortage of bananas in its UK stores after bad weather led to a vessel being delayed from supply country Costa Rica.
The UK’s largest retailer has apologised to consumers with notices in-store to explain the limited availability, and blamed the shortage on bad weather in Costa Rica and Colombia.
A source told FPJ: “Tesco has a shortage at the moment as one big vessel did not leave Costa Rica on time, so they were short overall.
“Since then they’ve been buying where they can, but mainly from Hamburg and on the continent.”
UK importers were not able to fill the gap as the market is experiencing typical shortages for this time of year, the source added.
“There is usually a shortage across the world from January to around April,” the source said, adding that it will be about two weeks until Tesco’s banana supply will settle.
A spokesperson for Tesco said: “Due to bad weather in Costa Rica and Colombia we have experienced a shortage of bananas shipped to the UK. However we expect things to return to normal next week.”
Bristol wholesale and banana ripener, BFS Bananas, said there have been no supply issues with bananas in the wholesale sector this week.
The company’s banana supply manager, Alan Denning, said: “We do import from Colombia and Costa Rica but we’ve had no supply problems.”
A sign in-store at Tesco read: “Due to recent poor conditions, we are experiencing some availability issues on bananas at the moment. We are sorry there aren't many bananas in store today.”
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