Yet, we have seen a shift in recent years: climate change is no longer a future threat or primarily a sustainability concern. It now has a fundamental effect on the availability of produce year-round, and must be factored into strategic procurement plans to ensure businesses have successful processes in place to mitigate these effects.
Whilst the availability of products is a core concern, we are also seeing large fluctuations in price, specification and quality, as well as climate-related transportation disruption. All of this means extreme weather can no longer be treated as an occasional problem, and must instead be considered a structural market change. So, buyers must shift their mindset, to ensure companies are not left behind in the race to protect their supply chain against climate change.
Why are UK businesses particularly vulnerable?
Procurement teams in the UK are particularly impacted by climate change because it’s not just about what is happening here. With 40% of our food supply being imported (according to the Government’s Food Security Report) and a particular dependence on fruit, vegetables, sugar and other commodities which cannot be grown on home soil, events overseas also directly affect our supply chains.
Heatwaves, unseasonal rainfall and other extreme weather events may be sporadic, but this creates an unpredictability which is almost more difficult for procurement teams to handle than permanent scarcity of a particular product. Delayed planting and harvesting, shorter seasons, sudden yield reductions, export restrictions, and rapid price alterations are all possibilities at any time – and the Food Standards Agency states this is only going to worsen in the future, predicting ‘greater supply chain volatility, increased consumer costs and greater food safety risks’.
Even if stock is available, supply chains can be hugely influenced by climate-related transportation disruption: an estimated 28% of English roads and 37% of railways are at risk of flooding currently, and the Government predicts these figures will rise to 46% and 54% respectively by 2050. Given the multitude of transport methods which can be relied on to move a shipment from A to B, an issue at just one point along the way can be pivotal. Take for example, when Holyhead was closed following Storm Darragh in December 2024 – between 5% and 10% of all meat and dairy imports into the UK normally pass through the port, illustrating the scale of the knock-on impact.
Other recent events have included the Panama Canal drought, which saw vessel throughput and size restricted, creating lengthy delays and capacity constraints for products. The consequences of climate-related route disruption are widespread: missed production slots, less reliable estimated arrival dates, increased need for buffer stock, and shorter remaining shelf life on arrival. And naturally, rerouting goods to another transport corridor tends to increase journey length and emissions, as well as raising costs.
How should procurement teams react to unpredictable supply chains?
Traditionally, annual price negotiations were based on each season being comparable to the year before – but this is no longer the case, and the recent bout of heatwaves in the UK serves as a timely reminder of this. That’s why savvy procurement teams are moving away from periodic reviews, towards continuous marketing monitoring, pre-agreeing flexibility with their suppliers, mapping out potential scenarios, and planning alternatives ahead of time rather than needing to reactively substitute ingredients.
It’s also important to think outside the boundaries of cost and continuity, as higher temperatures, humidity changes, flooding and altered pest distribution can impact bacterial growth, mould and mycotoxin development, water quality and contamination risks. This means businesses must be sure their suppliers are proactively taking measures such as increasing testing, reviewing hazard analysis, and monitoring origin-specific risks.
And it’s not just suppliers who need to be reviewing their processes: ONS research in 2025 found 71% of British businesses had not assessed climate risks, and only 7% had reviewed the potential for supply chain disruption, highlighting a very immediate need for increased oversight and forward planning.
Impact before shortage
The first sign of an issue is rarely a crop being unavailable or even scarce. Often, businesses will feel the impact well before this, given producers are facing higher costs associated with additional irrigation, pest control, energy use, fertiliser or feed requirements, and higher insurance premiums. Unable to absorb all of these costs themselves, a sizeable proportion are being passed through the supply chain to processers, manufacturers and distributors.
This means buyers can often see a price hike months before they experience supply disruptions, because the expenses associated with production, harvesting, processing and transporting have already increased well before supplies begin their journey to their end destination.
A potential solution may be sought in sourcing more locally-produced ingredients. However, given that the UK is also increasingly experiencing drought, flooding, soil erosion and extreme heat (all of which compound to result in unpredictable growing seasons), and the production-to-supply ratio dropped from 65% in 2025 to 60% in 2025 according to DEFRA, this may not provide the easy answer that procurement teams would hope for.
Quality control
During heatwaves, refrigerated products require more energy throughout the process – raising fuel costs and putting greater pressure on refrigeration equipment and temperature-controlled vehicles, increasing the need for maintenance and replacement. Shorter tolerance times during loading and unloading can also result in more spoilage and higher rejection rates. In these scenarios, a relatively small delay can become significantly more serious than it would be under normal conditions.
Even if they arrive in useable condition, products can vary greatly in size, colour, texture, flavour and cooking performance thanks to the effects of the climate – all factors which can influence customer acceptance, presentation, and preparation time.
Climate change competition
An underlying effect of climate change occurs thanks to demand disruptions, for example the failure of a crop in one country can see requirements from other regions increase. Shortages of a vegetable oil can see substitutes needed in higher volumes. And water restrictions also cause issues for industries including the agricultural sector. To avoid unexpected ‘competition’ between businesses for the same product, procurement teams must monitor substitute options as well as their preferred commodities. With all markets being connected, prices can raise even when an ingredient is not in short supply, if other linked products are affected by extreme weather.
Whether through product quality, transportation complications, or price hikes due to related supplies being impacted, it’s clear that climate change is having an ever-present influence on supply chains across the globe. With many of these effects outside of the control of businesses, it is up to their procurement teams to mitigate against the risks by planning ahead, making full use of market intelligence, co-ordinating with their suppliers, and having a strong (yet flexible) strategy in place. Without all of these, businesses will find themselves woefully underprepared and totally at the mercy of increasingly extreme weather.