with us to accelerate that. secondly, we believe that driving should be recognised as a skilled shortage and therefore open up temporary visas for the industry to be able to bring european drivers back into the country. the government says the industry needs to find the solutions to this, which means better working conditions, better pay. what are you doing? i would absolutely agree with that and arla, through our third party hauliers who do our distribution for us, has significantly increased pay. in fact, this week we have announced a 2,000 signing on bonus for the drivers tojoin and work on weekends. and we ve introduced an academy to make sure that we re growing the home talent, because what we really want in the long term is for british young people to come into the industry as well. how serious is this? well, i think when you re not able to supply 10% of the stores that would be expecting to get milk every day, i think that s quite worrying for a customer walking into a store and
the firm said 600 stores did not receive deliveries. they say the ongoing shortage of drivers, alongside staff having to isolate because of covid alerts, is causing major disruption. the company boss has been speaking to our business correspondent emma simpson. this is the world s largest fresh milk dairy. we process over a billion litres of milk from our cooperative farmer owners a year, so you can see this is a vast operation. in fact, one in every five bottles of milk that s sold in the uk is made here. since the beginning of april, we have experienced driver shortages, so being able to take the products from a factory like here in aylesbury to the supermarkets, and that has now increased to such a level where we re not able to deliver milk to every store that would like it. can you quantify this? normally, we deliver milk to 2,400 stores daily, so we re a very big milkman.
of a british woman who went missing last november. esther dingley, who was 37, was hiking near the spanish border with france when she disappeared. she and her partner had been on an open ended camper van tour of europe, but he wasn t with her at the time of her disappearance. the uk s biggest dairy company, arla, has told the bbc it failed to make a quarter of its deliveries to supermarkets last weekend because of a lack of lorry drivers. the firms said 600 stores did not receive deliveries. they say the ongoing shortage of drivers, alongside staff having to isolate because of covid alerts, is causing major disruption. the company s boss has been speaking to our business correspondent, emma simpson. this is the world s largest fresh milk dairy. we process over a billion litres of milk from our cooperative farmer owners a year, so you can see this is a vast operation.
in fact, one in every five bottles of milk that s sold in the uk is made here. since the beginning of april, we have experienced driver shortages, so being able to take the products from a factory like here in aylesbury to the supermarkets, and that has now increased to such a level where we re not able to deliver milk to every store that would like it. can you quantify this? normally, we deliver milk to 2,400 stores daily, so we re a very big milkman. unfortunately at the moment, there s about 10% of the stores every day that we can t deliver to, and at the weekend it s worse. last saturday, there were 600 stores that we couldn t deliver milk to. that s a lot of milk. that s a lot of milk and it s very worrying for customers when they go into shops and it s notjust milk, it s an industry issue it s worrying for customers when they go into shops and find
unfortunately at the moment, there s about 10% of the stores every day that we can t deliver to and at the weekend, it s worse. last saturday, there were 600 stores that we couldn t deliver milk to. that s a lot of milk. that s a lot of milk and it s very worrying for customers when they go into shops and it s notjust milk, it s an industry issue it s worrying for customers when they go into shops and find that the shelves are empty. what do you want to see happen here? i think it s a structural issue of a shortage of drivers in the uk, and it needs a structural solution. however, going into the summer with lots more holidays coming up, there s a short term crisis that we need to make sure that we don t have food shortages in the summer and therefore, we would like to work with the government first to recognise that it s a crisis. secondly, there s a backlog of tests for hgv drivers. we predict about 30,000 drivers are waiting to be tested. we want the government to work with us to