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Canada’s oldest water-powered flour mill, near London, is going gangbusters to feed the demand from home bakers created by the coronavirus lockdown.

The 200-year-old Arva Flour Mill, which faced an uncertain future four years ago over workplace safety requirements, is working double time to provide freshly ground grain to up to 300 to 500 customers a day, four to five times more than it would normally see daily before the COVID-19 pandemic, the mill’s owner says.

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“Grocery stores have been pretty much sold out of flour for almost a month,” said owner Mike Matthews.

“Right now it’s my fourth or fifth truckload of grain (received today). I can’t even keep track of it in my mind,” Matthews said. “We have probably milled about 85 tonnes of flour in under a month. That’s a joke to the flour-mill industry, but for us, that’s four times what we usually mill.”

Keith Currie, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, said one reason for the flour shortage is that before the pandemic close to 40 per cent of meals were served through the restaurant industry.