No oil, no flour, no mustard: since the Ukraine war, empty shelves at discounters and supermarkets are nothing unusual. Christian Böttcher from the Federal Association of the German Food Trade (BVLH) explains why there is a lack of oil and flour in many places.
Mr. Böttcher, many supermarkets and discounters have not been able to get cooking oil for weeks, mustard is becoming scarce, flour too, pasta is often missing, sometimes canned tomatoes. Is food not only becoming more expensive, but also becoming scarcer?
cooper: Whether food is scarce or not depends heavily on the product and the supply chain. Cooking oil, for example, is not just cooking oil: Sunflower oil is in short supply because Ukraine, as one of the main suppliers, is absent due to the war, so consumer demand is shifting. Customers are switching and buying other oils, such as rapeseed oil.
But that still doesn’t explain the empty shelves. What are people doing with all that oil?
cooper: Media reports and social media posts, conversations among friends about empty cooking oil shelves cause demand to skyrocket and amplify this effect with each passing day. People start hoarding. They now keep three or four bottles of oil in their closet instead of one, although they don’t need it. Instead of being stored by manufacturers and supermarkets, a disproportionately large number of products are now stored in relatively few kitchen cupboards at home.
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That’s irrational. And manufacturers and retailers can’t cope with the excess demand?
cooper: The supply chain for rapeseed oil cannot keep up with the drastically increased demand: production has to be ramped up. Many more bottles are needed for bottling and the higher transport requirements are added to this.
OK. And the increased energy and transport costs then cause the prices for flour, oil and pasta to rise again. In the case of oil, the connection with the Ukraine war is also clear, but why is there a flour shortage in many places now?
cooper: With flour it is similar to oil, although there is no shortage of grain here. The mere fear that a staple food could become scarce is psychologically enough to trigger the strong urge to buy and stockpile. Even for organic spelled flour, demand suddenly skyrocketed. And when it comes to flour, there is also a rumble in the supply chain, for example with paper packaging or transport.
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So not only glass bottles are in short supply, but all packaging manufacturers are affected. How long does the hamster phase last?
cooper: Until a second demand phenomenon occurs: as soon as consumers have stocked up on oil or flour, demand falls rapidly. We were also able to observe this with toilet paper during the corona pandemic. So hamstering isn’t worth it. It just disrupts the smooth operation of supply chains.
Do the Germans perhaps have to learn to live with the shortage in the long term?
cooper: I believe that retail has such a wide range that the short-term shortage of individual products can be easily compensated. Supermarkets have about 10,000 items on their shelves, even discounters now have more than 1,000. You can choose between the brands. The only thing that can happen in the future is that the selection fluctuates from time to time. But that’s no reason to hamster.
This article first appeared on FOCUS Online: The hamster trap: an expert explains what buying excesses mean for supply chains