A HEREFORDSHIRE bakery was forced to stop baking for a day after running out of gas supply.

Peter Cooks Bread, in Bishops Frome, near Bromyard, was left without gas on Friday night after a delivery from supplier Calor, which runs on an auto ordering service, failed to arrive.

Mr Cook said that they moved onto LPG gas four years ago because of the lack of mains gas supply in the village and have never experienced an issue until now.

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He said: "The gas supply runs on an auto ordering service, meaning that as soon as the supply to the business gets low, they come out and fill us back up, so we don't run out.

"For some reason, this week it didn't happen. The first time we knew we had a problem was when we tried to fire up the ovens on Friday and realised, we had no gas."

When the bakery flagged the problem to Calor a delivery was sent out on Saturday lunchtime allowing them to return to a normal service.

However, the shop is counting the cost of a day without gas supply to the business.

The bakery, renowned for its bread and cruffins, has stockists based all over Herefordshire and beyond, including the nearby Hop Pocket, Legges of Bromyard and Instone Court Farm Vending, and Oakchurch Farm Shop and Heggies of Hereford further afield.

Mr Cook said: "We had approximately 6,500 items that were supposed to be baked on Friday evening for Saturday morning and we weren't able to fulfill those orders.

"We had around 70 wholesale customers who couldn't get anything from us. Obviously, any interruption in the supply chain is massively costly for us."

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A statement on Calor's website regarding current issues with service nationwide said: "The national shortage of specialist qualified HGV drivers in 2021 and the ongoing COVID pandemic has resulted in a backlog of orders for us to fulfil.

"We have now recruited our normal level of drivers and are continuing to recruit additional drivers to deal with increased demand.

"With the continuing impact of Covid-19 and the rises in cases across the UK, some of our operational colleagues, including drivers, are affected, which means we continue to see an impact on our service."