Which supermarkets are best prepared for Hard Brexit?

We now hear that the government is stockpiling processed food in case of a No Deal Brexit, that they will use the military to distribute in case all the ports get blocked on Brexit Day. I'm not kidding.

However, it makes more sense for supermarkets to do the preparation to ensure their shelves don't end up bare, and the best way to do it is to have local suppliers.

Here are the supermarkets best prepared for Brexit:

Morrisons

Morrisons is unusual as it owns it's own food processing plants. They own 3 abbatoirs, 7 produce packing sites and two bakeries and a quarter of the food in their stores is produced by them. All their meat and dairy produce is sourced locally in Britain.

In early 2017 they announced a plan to take on 200 more British suppliers, and in 2018 announced that they'd succeeded in that goal. These suppliers supply hyper local produce like Edinburgh Gin or Plumgarths sausages. They are trying to increase local suppliers even further so that food is supplied within a 35 mile radius from the store.

Marks & Spencers

Marks and Spencer is an "own brand* retailer, they don't sell the brands of the big food providers like Unilever and others. Most of their fresh produce is sourced in Britain, as is their processed ready meals. However, there are things in the store that come from abroad - coffee, wine, bananas and so on. Most of their external suppliers come from around the world rather than the EU.

Sainsburys and Asda

They've responded to Brexit by announcing a merger. The two stores will still be run separately, but their suppliers will merge. This is to give it clout as it tries to renegotiate it's supply chain.

It looks like they'll still be supplied from Europe, but will use their new clout to ask the suppliers to eat the cost of any tariffs that arise from Brexit.

Tesco

Tesco sources 50% of it;s milk and cheese from the EU - so Brexit is going to hit it hard. Unfortunately for Tesco, in Feb 2016, just before the referendum, it switched milk suppliers from Arla (the British Dairy co-operative) to Muller Milk.

Muller Milk, anxious not to lose their contract, have announced plans to invest £100 million in UK dairy production plants which will source their milk from British farms.

Tesco has also announced a deal with French supermarket Carrefour. Carrefour isn't going to open supermarkets in Britain - the deal is about sharing suppliers with an aim to again force their suppliers to eat the cost of any tariffs that arise from Brexit, whether this is for French food moving to the UK or UK food moving to France.