Supermarkets across the UK are set to introduce a ration on a store cupboard staple after huge shortages.
Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Asda shoppers could face empty shelves of the cooking essential more than a year after stockpiling swept the nation at the start of the pandemic.
Tinned tomatoes, an essential ingredient for all manner of home-cooked dishes, are said to be in low supply, according to The Grocer.
Suppliers of the cupboard essential have now imposed limits on how much of their product each supermarket is allowed, in order to avoid stocks running out before the next harvest in August.
This is due to three years of poor harvests, which have had a knock-on effect on supermarket supply.
Suppliers had first began rationing supermarkets in April last year, during the height of panic-buying which had put suppliers under a huge amount of additional demand.
Now company Conserve Italia, which owns popular brands including Cirio, is suggesting that supermarkets try to reduce shopper demand by removing promotions on its products.
Diego Pariotti, export commercial and marketing director at Conserve Italia, said: "We are basically out of stock on every single line because for the last three years we didn’t have enough to satisfy demand."
Italy supplies more than three-quarters of the UK’s tomatoes each year, according to official customs data.
The second-largest supplier to the UK is Spain.
The shortages have led to a 20 percent increase in wholesale prices and could increase by as much as 50 percent according to Jason Bull, director at Eurostar Commodities.
There have also been some reports of food fraud in recent months.
In April Italian police claimed they had found over 4,400 tonnes of Petti Passata tomato products to be incorrectly labelled as “100 per cent Italian”.
Petti Passata, which supplies UK customers including Ocado, has assured its customers the goods sold to them were genuine.
Diego Pariotti has argued that continual cost-cutting and promotions to entice customers also devalues the product and increases the risk of this type of fraud.
He said: “Unfortunately, if you want a proper Italian product from a company that is respecting the rules, you need to pay for it.
"You cannot always use it as an attraction to get your customers into the stores.”
