UK food freight firms warn of looming 'catastrophe' from clogged ports

Post-Christmas supplies at risk, say hauliers, with 4,000 lorries stuck in Kent and thousands more idling at warehouses

About 4,000 lorries, and thousands more small vans, are now waiting to cross the Channel after a two-day French ban on freight arriving from the UK, with food transport firms warning that potential disruption levels now range between a shambles and a catastrophe" just as January and the end of Brexit transition looms .

Representatives of the Food and Drink Federation and the Road Haulage Association (RHA) told MPs on Tuesday that the hundreds of lorries queued on the M20 into the port of Dover, and at a temporary parking facility at Manston airport in Kent, were only a part of the problem. Many more vehicles, they said, were parked elsewhere in Kent, or waiting to depart from factories and warehouses.

Related: Covid: France to reopen UK border for French and lorry drivers, reports say