Nestle warns there could be delivery problems ahead of Christmas

You may have recently heard people talking about supply chain issues and lorry driver shortages. It's the reason why there have been long queues at petrol stations recently.

Now the world's largest food and drink company Nestlé, that makes chocolates including Quality Street and Lion bars, says that it too is facing problems at the moment.

The lorry driver shortage has also affected food companies such as McDonald's, KFC and Haribo who have all had issues which have caused them to run out of particular kinds of food or made it difficult for them to get their products into shops.

However when the Nestlé boss, Mark Schneider, was asked by BBC business reporters if he could guarantee their chocolates would be in the shops this Christmas, he could only say: "We are working hard."

Why are these problems happening?

The coronavirus pandemic has caused lots of disruption to people's lives and restrictions on travel and coronavirus rules, like social distancing, had an impact on manufacturing, farming, meat processing and other industries.

There has also been a decline in the number of people who want to be lorry drivers so there are fewer available to make deliveries.

Brexit has also had an impact as it has made it more difficult for foreign lorry drivers, and other important workers, to work in the UK.

When will the problems be fixed?

The government has confirmed that 5,000 fuel tanker and food lorry drivers from abroad will be able to apply to work in the UK for three months, until Christmas Eve to help with the disruption to supply chains, although far fewer have actually applied.

The Army has also been helping out by transporting fuel to petrol stations.

The lack of qualified lorry drivers is a long-term issue because lots of people are retiring and not that many new people are signing up to the job.