"Hamster shopping" - this is how Germans call the phenomenon when people panicily empty the shelves of supermarkets in order to stock up on basic food at home. After the first and second wave of the coronavirus epidemic, mass acquisitions have now started due to the war situation in Ukraine. If you cooking oil at the supermarket in Germany, you should expect to find empty shelves. Some stores already limit the maximum quantity per customer. First, it was the case with rapeseed oil, and now sunflower oil seems to be in short supply as well. And where the product is still available, you can only buy it at a horrible price. Shops charge up to 5 euros for a bottle of cooking oil.
The worsening shortage is caused by the fact that Ukraine is the leading exporter of sunflower oil in the world with 51 percent and Russia with 27 percent. The two countries are currently at war with each other. Germany imports 94 percent of its sunflower oil, so it is not only energy carriers that are sensitively affected by the conflict.
There are still goods in the warehouses for about four to six weeks. The conflict will also affect the domestic supply of protein feed made from sunflower, rapeseed or soy intended for cattle, pigs and poultry , said Maik Heunsch, the spokesman of the relevant industry association, in an interview with the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. In addition to cooking oil, yeast and flour also disappeared from supermarket shelves due to people's panic buying. Customers are complaining about the shortage on social media.
Panic buying has started in Romania as well, because people fear that it will soon be impossible to get cooking oil and flour at all. Photos of empty shelves and shopping carts full of cooking oil are spreading like wildfire on social media.
The full article of Magyar Nemzet can be read here.
Image: Twitter
