Shelf shortages

[olive]

Got quite a shock in Lidl. No milk of any description on the shelf.

Didn’t notice any other shortages. Later in Super Save ( a local independent) the lady in the queue at the till was buying five litres of sunflower oil and two packs of 18 toilet rolls. The oil might have been destined for a car.

Presumably the milk situation is just a product of lorry driver industrial action. Anyone else seen any shortages?

Olive farmers will be making their way to Madrid on the 20th to protest at the rising price of consumables like fuel, spraying chemicals.The price consumers pay for olive oil needs to go up. A view no doubt shared by every food producer in the land.

[BENIDORM]

Olive,
Not many shortages in our local shops apart from sunflower oil and maybe a couple of milk brands ie. Puleva, but as you stated more likely shortage caused by transport issues.

A few price increases, butter and flour gone up a little ,I noticed.

But certainly not like the empty shelves of the supermarkets in Ukraine and of course we are not being subjected to missile and bomb attacks as we shop...

Saludos,
Gordon

[Wicksey]

There are reports locally on Torrox Costa of empty fruit and veg aisles and no fish, particularly Aldi. On Spanish TV last night I caught pictures of a very large supermarket which didn't have any meat, fish, milk, fresh fruit/veg. It said that Lidl has had to shut one of their stores as the shelves are bare but not sure where that was. The one thing we cannot manage without is water as we do not have a drinking water supply at the house, so I guess we'll have to go out and make sure we can get some. I have two freezers and a well stocked store cupboard, but we eat a lot of fresh veg which I would miss. The girasol oil shortage is down to the war in Ukraine I understand as they are the number one producer, with Russia a close second.

[jonbar.1]

Shopped at Mercadona Nerja yesterday.
Stocks as normal.No obvious shortages.Stacks of Sunflower oil. Don't know how much of it is consumed by the average ex-pat; one bottle lasts us for about 3 months.( we use more olive oil)

[olive]

Yes I read that about Ukraine. Might be an element as like olive oil , girasol doesn’t keep for ever. The producers have large tanks hich are hopefully empty come the new season - girasol summer? So it will be a distribution issue. Come Autumn no doubt there will be production issues

Wicksey. You will have to do like the locals and walk a couple of miles to your local fuente to bring some bottles of water back each day. Our locals swear by the health benefits of the water overlooking the benefits of the trek itself!

[Wicksey]

Wicksey. You will have to do like the locals and walk a couple of miles to your local fuente to bring some bottles of water back each day. Our locals swear by the health benefits of the water overlooking the benefits of the trek itself!

Unfortunately I am still hobbling along with a bad leg so a trek up hill and down dale to the nearest fuente is out of the question We did used to do that back in the 1990s as we've never had drinking water here.

Neighbours reported that Aldi and Lidl looked like the locusts had been in this afternoon and were stripped bare of most products. Dia had water, milk and yoghurts but no veg/fruit. Couldn't be bothered to go to Mercadona for a few bits and we didn't want to have to dash out next week, so we're OK for now.

[Lyric]

Aldi looked like it had been hit by Locusts as stated no fresh anything. Lidl was a little better.
Been in Mercadonna twice today, this morning it was ready for a normal shop, this afternoon there were some empty veg shelves, still plenty of fresh meat though.
I think they normally run stock of fresh down on Saturday and restock for Monday. This afternoon they were unloading an artic.

Twice because without a list, sometimes even with one, I am hopeless.

[Pamela1]

I think it's just panic buying and stock piling all over again. No talk here about sunflower oil being in short supply but i don't think brit homes use it in the same quantities as Spanish homes do. What about vegetable oil,is that also going off the shelves?

[Wicksey]

We don't have vegetable oil here I don't think. Most shops I use mainly have olive and sunflower, and I've seen colza which is rapeseed oil. I saw people in Carrefour the other day being turned away from the cash desk as they'd taken 2 x 5L bottles and they were only allowing one 5L. 1L last me years as I rarely use it as I don't deep fry anything usually. I use extra virgin olive usually and I have coconut oil if I do a stir fry.

The fresh veg will only last so long so I don't think you can really stockpile that. We did buy extra water as we cannot live without that should there be shortages.

[Pamela1]

Ah ok Wicksey, i never knew veg oil wasn't used in Spain...BiL was telling OTH on the phone last week about sunflower oil being limited to 5L.It would take me months to use that much oil.Like you i don't do that much deep frying and we generaly use more olive oil than any other...

[Free at Last]

The only thing we couldn't buy from our nearest Mercadona in Vélez yesterday morning was onions (but got some from a nearby fruteria without any problem). They had both olive oil and sunflower oil on the shelves (but there have been notices up since the start of last week saying that there is a limit on how much sunflower oil customers can purchase). We don't use sunflower oil but I did notice the price of both extra virgin and virgin olive oil is now very high (EV €4.75 per bottle and virgin €4.55). I shopped there on Monday, Thursday and Saturday last week and didn't notice anyone piling up trolleys with what looked like panic buying, not like when the first Covid lockdown began and there were an awful lot of empty shelves for a week or so until it died down.

There have been reports in the press that the fishing fleet will not be going out from Monday to Wednesday this week (because of problems getting the catch transported due to the strike). Also reports that the milk processors were going to suspend operations and not collect milk from the producers for the same reason, which is most likely why people have been clearing the shelves of milk in some shops.

[olive]

Lavanda will correct me if I am wrong but surely sunflower oil is a vegetable oil?

[Wicksey]

Olive you are right. I had never considered that sunflower oil and olive oils were classed as vegetable oil. However, after a bit of googling, it seems there is a generic term of 'vegetable oil' that can cover a mix of a number of different types of oils. I guess it's like the difference between a single malt whisky and a blended whisky, but I just looked at Tesco's Veg Oil and it contains 100% rapeseed. So I've learned something today!

I've heard that Mercadona doesn't seem to have the shortages that Lidl and Aldi do. I'm due to go there later next week sometime so I'll see what's left by then.

[Cádiz]

One the subject of veg oil... which oil does the Spanish use to deep-fry fish... the calamares etc are so good i would love to be able to do myself.

Advise and recipy appreciated....

[El Cid]

I use cheap olive oil. Extra Virgen is not really used for cooking.

Sid

[spanish_lad]

In lidl alhaurin de la torre yesterday there was no bread, hardly any meat, no eggs..

Lorry drivers are protesting the price of fuel by driving around using fuel..

What are they going to eat after a long day not delivering food to supermarkets? Air and tap water ? They dont really 'get it' do they

[1bassleft]

In Spanish class, I was disabusing my teacher of the notion that olive oil was <€3/litre (for the good stuff) and Maxi Dia had a 2x1L or 1x5L limit on girasol per person. As well as being the symbol of Ukraine, sunflower oil is normally an enormous % of the local supply. I, too, have noticed some locust shelves for meat and veg in Carrefour and Dia. Let's see if this develops...

[costakid]

In lidl alhaurin de la torre yesterday there was no bread, hardly any meat, no eggs..

Lorry drivers are protesting the price of fuel by driving around using fuel..

What are they going to eat after a long day not delivering food to supermarkets? Air and tap water ? They dont really 'get it' do they

Malaga city last week, lorries blocking the streets using lots of fuel that they are complaining about price wise. Walk and protest surely.

[Wicksey]

There seemed to be some sort of protest going on along the motorway, Thursday I think. There was loads of horns honking and lorries blocking the carriageway driving very slowly. It caused a huge backlog of traffic for a good 20 mins. Never see the point of doing things like that as it's hardly going to gain support from all those stuck in the resulting traffic jam.

[spanish_lad]

Malaga city last week, lorries blocking the streets using lots of fuel that they are complaining about price wise. Walk and protest surely.

It's worse than that, they were in alemeda the other day like you say, but then they drove along and into the airport, with a police escort, now they are driving up and down the port road to the industrial estates.

It's causing traffic mayhem.

They still won't have any food to eat this week tho. They will starve before the price goes down again.