Similar issues when you’re in WA - and north of Perth. Even Perth forgets we’re here half the time, let alone them over east.
Its an absolute food bowl here though - we have stacks and stacks of fresh fruit, veg, meat, seafood, dairy, just short on the packaged products that come across the Nullarbor. We’re REALLY low down the list for them, because everything has to go through Perth first.
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Not so good for online tho, my last delivery, 25% was n/a by the time my order was to be filled. I really wanted to get some easter buns. Coles still has not got its COPS service organised (priority service). woolworths wins there, well and truly.
I found out yesterday that the fruit and veg shop I usually go to when Coles lets me down, freshness-wise, is doing deliveries now, so next week I’ll shop with them for fresh stuff. The Woolies fresh was just so disappointing. Small, Limp and rubbery cauliflower at $8.90 was just disgusting.
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I went searching for some background on the Australian TP industry, wondering if it was the logistics and supply chain slowing the restocking.
Fearlessly AFR reported on 6th March, more than 3 weeks back. It would be all fixed in a week or a few days if we stopped panic buying.
Is there a back log of paper at the factory gate suggesting we are being logistically constrained, or …
No need to comment further.
Note:
Interestingly some of our manufacturers import their raw paper or pulp, despite Australia exporting wood chips to produce paper pulp.
The report attributes most of the imported poo paper going to corporate supplies contracts. IE not to retail/consumers. Guess that is what we get in our workplace & office toots or the local shopping centres?
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There was another report that a shipment of supplies was going to china… that the third such. Including TP? dont know, I didnt read the whole thing, but if boatloads of stuff are heading for china, maybe we will yet be down to leaves for wiping our bums.
This was debunked by the media as a myth soon after it surfaced. Even the Australian Federal Police got on the bandwagon to quell the rumours.
Even if it wasn’t dismissed so quickly, the question is 'Why would China wish to import our relatively expensive toilet paper when they have excess manufacturing capacity within China?’ On this basis, the rumours don’t stack up.
I wonder if it is the Russians playing games with fake news?
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I understood that their capacity was severely depleted when the people running the factories became ill. But I’ll accept your comments. Please note that mine was a question, not a statement of assumed truth about the TP, and the leaves comment was intended as a joke.
What is true s that PPEs are heading to china by the boatload and the government is doing nothing to stop it. And given how our hospitals and doctors are desperate for those supplies… I think something should be done.
There were a couple of shipments, by wealthy Chinese nationals, in late February before the pandemic really took hold in Australia. This has been reported in the news recently, but the export events were a month earlier and the government has taken action to prevent any future shipments.
The other question is why would Chinese import things like masks when they have ramped up production in the past month and now exporting them to pandemic hotspots. These Chinese have also beeing offering support (medical equipment, PPE etc) to hotspot countries. I suspect this this is to assist other nations as well as find a market for the excess manufacturing supply which currently exists in China.
This is not the case either…this is from the PM’s website
Action to prevent price gouging and exportation of critical sanitary and medical products
The Commonwealth Government will take action to help prevent exploitative price gouging and exporting products that are essential to preventing and controlling the spread of coronavirus.
These measures will help prevent individuals purchasing goods including face masks, hand sanitiser and vital medicines and either re-selling them at significant mark-ups or exporting them overseas in bulk, which prevents these goods from reaching people who need them in Australia.
These measures will not be designed to affect normal consumer buying of goods, commercial imports and exports, or other appropriate bulk sales.
Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation on social media which is then taken as fact and talked about amongst friends/family. This could be another example of misinformation being spread unintentionally, or the spreading of information which is very much out-of-date.
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Perhpas my bad for leaving this so open.
Options may be
- we are still panic buying and hoarding
- local manufacture ramp up to meet some lost imported supply plus retail backorders has not got there yet
- some local manufacture that relies on imported feed stock is now input constrained and cannot produce a full capacity
- logisitcs (not enough trucks) being brought in to distribute product
- not logisitcs but trucks preferentially going to the nearer retail sites in the hope that once near demand is satisfied they can make time for longer trips (an 80-20 outcome)
- Some supplies may also be preferentially diverted to critical needs such as hospitals where demand is greater.
- Flying toilet paper or shipping it in containers to China etc, possible but speculation until the Ministers for Trade or Home Affairs can clarify.
Which one makes the best headline?
Agree there is a potentially very disturbing observation if point 7 applies to other critical goods.
Logic asks?
Dollars earned per kg of airfreight vs demand in say China, TP and masks might be the last item you would expect on a plane. Food products and herbal products/medicines might be the go? Also speculation, but not such a great headline, wait and see.
Amazingly we seem not to be running out of packaged potato chips or coke, also very logistics and supply chain dependent.
Thanks for that elucidation. I’ll correct it elsewhere as well.
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Hi
Woollies great plan to help vulnerable people seems like a waste of time. I registered, but the pick up times are booked out for at least a week. I really do not want to go out shopping because I am in the “at risk” category. I don’t want to go shopping at a special time with all the other oldies, either. Seems like a good way to infect a whole lot of vulnerable people at once.
Now they are offering a “basic needs” package for us old and disabled. $80 delivered. It contains:
Household Essentials
- Flour
- Sugar
- Toilet paper
- Soap (or other hygiene products)
Breakfast
- Longlife milk (or a dairy substitute)
- Fruit juice
- Weetbix, oats (or breakfast cereal)
- Crackers (or similar)
- Spread (jam, vegemite, honey or peanut butter)
Lunch & Dinner
- Pasta (or rice, lentils, noodles, quinoa, couscous)
- Pasta sauce (or similar)
- Canned tuna (or other canned meat)
- Canned items - soup, vegetables & fruit
- Baked beans (or similar)
- Tortilla bread (or similar)
Snacks
- Tea
- Biscuits (or chocolate wafers, sweet snacks)
- Muesli bars (or dried fruits)
So now they are trying to kill us off with malnutrition and obesity! What a weird combination. Loads of fat and sugar. No coffee, no fresh foods, either. Or pet food. We can see the doctor without going out, but how can we self isolate if we have to go and shop because nobody is making sensible arrangements to help us? All those unemployed people could be given temporary jobs doing it.
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count me among the 96% of Australians who want a clean renewable future
Try the home delivery option in the early morning. I found that the slots were all filled for ages too, and nearly gave up, but tried again a few days later and was able to get almost all of what I needed, and a slot the following morning from 5am.
I’ll just reply that the box appears targeted to a special situation.
Not everybody has a pet and what sort of food would you include? Dogs, cats, birds and fish all need different.
Not everyone drinks coffee. I think they have taken a punt that more housebound elders drink tea than coffee.
It is to be delivered by Oz post (last time I looked) so it has to be non-perishable. This is not same as next day home delivery.
To be fair creating a box that nearly everybody would eat, that is a well balanced group of foods, for $80 is an impossible task.
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I bet Aldi could do it for $80! There are not food shortages, they keep telling us. So why choose such unhealthy food? We are not at war. Asking for pet food was unreasonable, I admit!
You had me worried. Visions of tuckerbox on toast.
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Shortage of truck drivers - they’ve been talking about that for the last few years. Changes over the last 20 odd years to fatigue management restrictions have meant they need more drivers to do what less drivers used to do. Its an unglamorous, lonely, hard work life that doesn’t pay great (when you compare say, general freight line haul to other options people have like mining jobs…) - and add to that, working in transport is the deadliest job in Australia.
We don’t pay or respect our truck drivers proportionate to how important they are to us, and that’s got a part in why we are in the situation we are in.
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Whenever i see something on special and i use or be tempted to purchase i always buy it.Even if i don’t need it right away as you will use it at some point.Since i have always done that i have been totally fine with the current climate.Starting to get low on food now,but still have plenty of TP lol
Maybe they could, but are they doing it? Answer: No. Does it matter if someone could (in theory) do it for $5 if they are not doing it?
The problem is what economists call ‘place utility’ and ‘time utility’. A simple explanation is there may be 10000 litres of milk at a storage facility in Qld but only 10 litres in Vic. The value of the milk in Vic is going to be higher because it is a scarce resource in Vic where needed, when needed. Market theory is that supply will be moved around and as quantity is transported from Qld to Vic the price in Qld should rise and the price in Vic should fall.
It could be so simple as few are buying it in person so there are ample stocks. It could also have to do with use by dates and they need to move it. Unhealthier foods also tend to make one feel full more quickly so someone might have thought the supply would last a bit longer because less would be eaten?
So many possibilities, and some of them make sense in one or another way.
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I went to our local Woollies for the old timers happy hour today and at 7:00 AM, the mob headed straight to the toilet roll corner where it was fully stacked with Quiltron 8 roll packs and some Sorbent double lenght 6 packs.
By 7:15 AM, the mob had already all got their pack each and they had hardly made a dent in the display.
.
Aploogies for the photo quality but it does show what was left.
The paper towel display was also fully stocked so I finally managed to get a 6 roll pack of Kleenex after many weeks.
Pasta, rice and flour were still critically low as was liquid hand soap, especially antibacterial types, and sanitized hand wipes were still non-existent although I actually seen a couple of empty boxes for the first time yesterday.
Coles had toilet paper but only a fraction of what Woollies had and still had no paper towels.
Both were fully stocked with mince and meat stocks were pretty good.
Things appear to be improving in the Deep North but there are still some categories in very short supply.
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A few articles regarding the dsigusting behaviour of some customers.
And another grub.
