Waitrose stores have completely run out of own label pasta - and other retailers could soon suffer the same fate.

As predicted by The Grocer in February, supplies of durum wheat - the key ingredient of pasta - are close to running out across Europe and worldwide.

With harvests unlikely to be in full swing until July, the situation was only set to get worse, warned pasta suppliers.

"We're coming to the end of durum stocks and there are a lot of worries in terms of availability and quality - we're scraping the bottom of the barrel," said Nigel Singh, UK commercial manager for Pasta Lensi, the biggest own-label pasta supplier in the world.

Canada, a major player in the market, was set to run out of durum by July, so would be competing for European stocks until its own harvest got under way in October, he added.

"That's going to put more pressure on European stocks. We've had two very bad harvests on the trot and it's going to take two bumper harvests to get us back."

Waitrose blamed the shortfall on a quality issue with its Italian supplier, which it said it was working to resolve. "We have sourced additional branded pasta

to ensure that we have sufficient stocks," said a spokeswoman.

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