Britain’s supermarkets could be staring down the barrel of patchy shelves by midsummer, with ministers quietly war-gaming a scenario in which the continuing conflict with Iran chokes off carbon dioxide supplies to the country’s food and drink industry.
Whitehall officials have been rehearsing what they describe internally as a “reasonable worst-case scenario” should the strait of Hormuz remain closed into June, shipping routes stay jammed, and a mechanical hiccup at one of Britain’s critical CO2 plants compound the pressure. The exercise, codenamed Turnstone and convened under the Cobra emergency framework, has drawn in officials from Downing Street, the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence.
News of the drill, first surfaced by The Times, has prompted a rapid-fire reassurance campaign from ministers, who insist the planning is prudent rather than panicked. Business Secretary Peter Kyle told Times Radio on Thursday that the leak was “unhelpful” but argued the public “need to be reassured that we are doing this kind of planning”. CO2 supplies, he added, were “not a concern” for the UK economy.
For small and medium-sized food producers, brewers and hospitality operators, however, the contingency talk lands at an awkward moment. The summer trading window, already inflated by the World Cup kicking off on 11 June, is make-or-break territory for independent breweries and wholesalers. A squeeze on carbon dioxide would ripple rapidly through their supply chains, hitting everything from pint pulls to packaged meats.
Carbon dioxide, though a by-product of other industrial processes, is the quiet workhorse of British food and drink. The gas is used to stun pigs and poultry at abattoirs, to pack fresh meat and salad leaves in modified-atmosphere packaging that keeps bacteria at bay, and to put the fizz in beer and soft drinks. It also underpins refrigeration, MRI scanning, surgical procedures and the cooling of nuclear reactors.
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