Health

Demand for flour doubles during lockdown as more people take up baking at home



Demand for flour has greatly increased during the coronavirus lockdown as more people take up baking at home.

Grocery sales of flour increased by 92 per cent in the four weeks up to March 22 from the same period last year, consumer analysts Kantar have said.

The National Association of British and Irish Millers (Nabim) says the industry has doubled production but is still struggling to meet demand.


Wessex Mill in Oxfordshire has introduced night shifts so the operation can run 24 hours for the first time in the 125 years since it opened.

The mill’s online shop is now only open for ten minutes a day due to record traffic.

“We’ve found the demand mostly to be of small bags sold direct to the public,” said Emily Munsey, who runs the mill with her father.

Emily Munsey runs the Wessex Mill with her father

“We’ve increased production four times, and we’re aiming to increase it to six times what we’d normally do in the next two weeks.

“We’ve got a night shift on small bags which we’ve never done before.

“We’ve added ore staff, more running time, and we are going to try and increase that further after Easter’s over.”

The mill has recruited local people who have lost their work due to the Covid-19 lockdown. It has closed to the public and added cleaning and safety measures to prevent the virus spreading during flour production.

Priya Nicholas, communications manager for Nabim, told the Standard the industry had doubled its output of prepacked flour.

“Previously we were making the equivalent of two million 1.5 kg bags of flour each week, now we are making four million,” she said.

“But we’re still struggling to meet the demand, and four million is full capacity. Not many industries would have more than double capacity in their back pocket.

Only four per cent of flour produced goes to individual shoppers, with the remaining 96 per cent being bought by commercial customers.

“It’s not a shortage of flour, we’ve got plenty,” Ms Nicholas said. “But it’s not really possibly to produce more of the little bags.

“So now we’re looking at other ways of trying to get flour to people that want to bake at home.”

The flour industry is trying to make larger bags available to bakers and other businesses who could sell the bigger bags to customers.

Ms Nicholas said she does not think the number of people baking at home will lessen any time soon.

“We know that the demand hasn’t subsided let,” she added.



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