Tesco apologise after fridges break and food goes to waste on hottest ever day in Sheffield

Temperatures reached a sizzling 35.1C in Sheffield yesterday; beating the previous record of 34.3 degrees in August 1990.

While the hot weather was good news for Sheffield’s sun-seekers, it caused havoc with rail travel.

There were more weather-related problems at Tesco on Ecclesall Road where the heat caused the fridges to break.

Workers were forced to dispose of all the refrigerated items as they were ‘unsafe for human consumption'.

Responding to a Sheffield customer on Twitter, Tesco apologised for the amount of food that had been wasted and raised the issue with a store manager.

Tesco said: “While we know this is very upsetting, we were unable to ensure the safety of the food on this occasion as our fridges unexpectedly broke down.”

A Tesco spokesperson told the Star that the food would have been disposed of via their ‘food waste hierarchy’.

“We think it’s incredibly important for every retailer to be clear about waste within their own operations so we can find ways of reducing waste together over the long-term,” a spokesperson said.

“In 2018/19, we sold 9,937,974 tonnes of food to customers through our UK operations. This generated 77,184 tonnes of surplus food (not sold to customers).

“In total 32,887 tonnes of surplus food was redistributed to charities, community groups, colleagues and animal feed. This represents 63% increase compared to last year.

“In this instance the food was unfit for human consumption so could not be redistributed in this manner as we would do as a first port of call.

“The food will then be considered for animal feed. We follow the food safety guidelines so the waste will either go to animal feed or energy recovery.”