Food items such as your trusted brands of coffee and tea, maize meal and rice, as well as toiletries such as deodorants, lotions and bathing soaps could soon vanish from supermarket shelves.
Food retail chains announced a national shortage in dry food goods and toiletries. A decline in the supply of these items was first experienced in November and the phenomenon is expected to continue into the new year. Fortunately, these stock shortages will not extend to fresh produce.
Last week, Pick ‘n Pay’s food and merchandise director Paul Connellan reported the shortage as having reached its peak during the last week of November. During that week, supply was particularly low in the Gauteng area.
According to Connellan, an average of 69% of ordered goods in Gauteng was distributed by Pick ‘n Pay’s top 10 suppliers. Connellan added that the short supply is expected to continue, and that it can be ascribed to poor planning by producers.
Shoprite Holdings confirmed this by saying service levels from dry goods and toiletry suppliers were in decline. It said the shortage of dry goods was a result of a huge growth in demand experienced over the past year.
According to Shoprite’s group marketing director, Brian Weyers, the manufacturing industry’s forecasts failed to keep track with the rapidly growing middle-class market’s buying power. Shoprite deals with most suppliers in the country, including Tiger Brands, Pioneer Foods and Unilever South Africa.
He said it was difficult to “single out specific brands, categories or products as the short supply of affected products is occurring randomly”. He, however, warned that a small volume of niche products could be more affected than basic items and that shoppers may have to switch brands to fill their shopping baskets.
The growing middle class’s buying power, he said, is surpassing the forecasted demand. But the current production problem will not have a “severe influence” on consumers’ Christmas shopping.
“We are confident that our suppliers will soon be able to beef up their capacity in order to improve their supply of orders. It is also expected that contingency plans, such as imports, will be considered to alleviate the problem,” he added.
But a week after Shoprite Holdings, Spar and the Pick ‘n Pay Groups reported the shortages, the country’s major food suppliers are denying knowledge of any shortages.
This week, Tiger Brands’s Jimmy Manyi refuted possibilities of short supply on the part of the company. Manyi said: “As far as Tiger Brands is concerned, we are meeting the demand. We have all the capacity to deliver goods to our clients. There is absolutely no crisis at Tiger Brands.”
Unilever’s Kathy Tucker claimed ignorance of the short supply and added that if there is a problem, “it’s not around our [product] categories”. She said Unilever South Africa has not received any complaints from its suppliers as yet. She added that Unilever had a good working relationship with its clients and that if there were problems, they would readily know about it.
During a visit to a Makro dealership in Johannesburg and a few supermarkets around the area, the Mail & Guardian found that the dry-goods supply still met demand.