“There is no possibility that there will be a shortage of supermarkets in Spain. Not even with the hoarding that took place in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, something like this happened.” distribution in our country agree on the same idea. Despite the image of empty stores in the United Kingdom, with the first problems also on the other side of the Atlantic, especially in the US, and just when the supermarket chains insist that the risk in the Spanish market seems, for the time being, , null.
“In Spain, the supply chain has worked perfectly even in the worst moments. There have been no stock breaks throughout the pandemic and we do not expect it to happen now,” Ignacio González, the president of Aecoc, recently summarized, the organization of manufacturers and distributors that encompasses more than 30,000 companies. But the problem is not trade, but the food industry, which . And if there is a shortage of raw materials or packaging, this can end up being transferred to the consumer, with which manufacturers begin to prepare contingency plans. On October 19, Danone was one of the first to sound the alarm. “What started with an increase in the price of raw materials has been aggravated by the generalized restrictions that affected our supply chain in many parts of the world,” said the financial director of the yogurt giant, Juergen Essen, during the presentation of results. . Along the same lines, the Federation of Food and Beverage Industries has warned of “the seriousness of the situation” caused not only by the inflationary increase in energy costs, raw and auxiliary materials, but also by “provision difficulties, which Together they pose a serious threat to companies and employment in the sector, which are still in the process of recovering from the crisis caused by the pandemic.
“I never imagined that we would be in this situation talking about problems in the supply chain, but it is a reality,” Vivek Sankaran, CEO of Albertsons, a US supermarket chain, recently explained to Bloomberg. “On any given day there is going to be a lack of product in our stores,” is not an isolated complaint in the sector. It is a widespread feeling that affects several countries. “We’re seeing extraordinary scenes. In some supermarkets you used to see fresh seasonal food. Now you see big deodorant displays. It’s not that the nation has suddenly started to smell bad, it’s that it’s the only thing they have in sufficient quantities, so they place it on the shelves so that they seem full”, the president of the company, Ian Wright, assured a few days ago.
Whether or not it happens in Spain, what is a reality, at the moment, is the rise in prices. And it is that, although there are no stock breakages, the cost of raw materials is skyrocketing and the price of food is going to continue to rise. In fact, companies such as Kraf, Nestlé, Danone or the Spanish Ebro Foods, owner of , have already announced that they will have to do so in the face of “the unstoppable inflation of costs”, according to the latter company.
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