A supermarket threw away thousands of pounds of frozen food after two power cuts plunged the store into chaos.

The Savacentre in the Eastgate Centre, Basildon, was forced to close down for the day because back-up generators only provided lighting.

Other shops in the complex, including Claire's Accessories, Superdrug and Toys R Us, were also affected by yesterday's blackout.

Duty manager of the Savacentre, Jill Stewart, said: "We had to put everything into skips, from fresh to frozen food. We haven't been able to put a price on it yet, but it's going to be really expensive.

"We also lost a day's trade yesterday, which didn't help us either. It was not a good day at all, yesterday and we would rather forget it."

Staff were on hand to lug the supermarket's supplies into skips.

Ms Stewart said: "We're virtually out of stock now.

"It really was a horrendous waste."

The first cable problem, affecting 1,500 customers, was resolved quite quickly, explained Claire Byrd, a spokeswoman for electricity supplier 24seven.

She added: "However, at 9.15am there was a second unrelated underground cable failure and it took quite a while to get this back.

"It affected 300 of our customers and it was difficult to restore power to them. We managed it by 12.30pm, but some businesses were not able to get power back until later in the evening."

. Controller for the Eastgate Centre, Mark Tellam, said the power cut shut down one of the shopping centre's electricity substations.

Published Tuesday, June 3, 2003

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