HP Sauce supplies dry up

Supplies of Britain's favourite brown sauce are drying up because of problems getting HP onto supermarket shelves since production was switched from Birmingham to Holland earlier this year.

Across the country, local independent supermarkets are worst hit as unlike retail giants like Tesco and Asda, they need to buy their supplies through local wholesalers. For many retailers, stocking up on the iconic blue-labelled bottles of sauce that is a favourite on the nation's bacon butties, has become a hit and miss affair.

John Grant, central buyer at wholesaler A F Blakemore in Wolverhampton, confirmed that stocks of the sauce were becoming increasingly hard to guarantee.

"It is very difficult to get hold of HP," he said. "It is coming through but not as much as we would like it to. It happened about three months ago because they were having trouble getting it over from Holland. We were told by Heinz they were having trouble producing it. It's happening with other sauces they make as well, such as Daddies."He added that rationing had even been introduced by the producers to cope with the problem.

"We order around 100 cases which usually lasts us around two weeks but it is on allocation," he said.

The manager of one Smethwick supermarket, who did not want to be named, confirmed that he had been suffering severe problems in getting both HP and Daddies Sauce.

"My wholesaler has been out of HP for the past two weeks, and I'm now down to my last four bottles of Daddies' Sauce," he said.

Joe Jawandha at Ruskin Road Supermarket in Bushbury, Wolverhampton, said while the store had been able to buy HP, it had only been larger bottles.

Kulwinder Kaur of Banga Supermarket on Cannock Road, Wolverhampton, said her shelves had been dry of HP for about a week.

Heinz accepts it has a problem with meeting demand for brown sauces, but denies that the problem is connected with the production switch to Holland. Spokesman Nigel Dickie said early demand for barbecues this year had led to stocks being depleted. He added staff were working "around the clock" to produce more brown sauce.

By Jim Dunton and Daniel Wainwright