Grupo Gallo has warned this Wednesday that there is a “real risk of short-term pasta shortages at the point of sale if the current situation persists”, in reference to the strike of transporters in protest against the price of fuel.
In a statement sent to Efe, Gallo assured that “after seven days without being able to serve product, warehouses are at full capacity and, if the situation persists, it would force us to take measures at a productive level that would involve the temporary cessation of activity in the factories imminently”.
Group sources have clarified to Efe that the mention of this temporary unemployment right now refers to the Cordoba plant located in the town of El Carpio, which may soon be forced to stop production, while there is normality in the Catalan plants, those located in Granollers, Esparreguera and Sant Vicenç dels Horts (Barcelona ). The El Carpio plant concentrates the production of dry pasta and is the largest of the group in Spain, while the Esparreguera plant produces gluten-free pasta; the one in Granollers produces fresh pasta and other fresh products such as cannelloni or lasagna, and the one in Sant Vicenç dels Horts concentrates the production of oriental pasta.
Gallo asks the agents involved “find a solution immediately to avoid the lack of supply of basic consumer goods in the shopping cart and in Spanish households, such as pasta, flour and breadcrumbs”.
The company assures that the protests called by the Platform for the Defense of the Freight Transport Sector have affected the normal functioning of its distribution channels, “preventing the exit of product” from its warehouses.
Although the group has maintained its normal activity in all its plants, it has had to reorganize its logistics to be able to take over storage from the production of pasta, and stresses that if the stoppage continues it will have to temporarily cease its activity in the plants, as it accumulates seven days without being able to serve product and therefore without being able to dispose of the product accumulated in the warehouses, which are already full.
“Grupo Gallo appeals to the responsibility of all the parties concerned and demands the construction of the necessary dialogue framework to reach an agreement that allows normality to be restored and avoid major consequences that structurally affect industrial activity”, he adds.
Gallo’s CEO, Fernando Fernández Soriano, has assured La Vanguardia that the company has spent “nine days without hardly serving anything from its Cordoba factory”, so if this continues “the stock that our customers have left will go to finish quickly, in two days at the most”.
The biggest problems in food transport are occurring these days with products that come from the south of Spain or from Galicia, since in Catalonia the protest of carriers has less incidence than in those communities.