"Nowhere, except for us, is there a shortage" - supermarket customers are surprised about bottlenecks in Germany

Created: 04/28/2022, 16:58

By: Magdalena von Zumbusch

Full shelves with sunflower oil in Croatia.

© Facebook/ Mike Blume

Sunflower oil and some other products are hard to come by in German supermarkets, while the European neighbors have everything “in abundance”.

"Why?" asks a Facebook user.

Munich – On Facebook, a user expresses his anger about the food shortages in the supermarkets.

Hamsters cannot be the only reason for the current bottlenecks, he says and demands an explanation.

"NOWHERE else is there a shortage," says a Facebook user

A Facebook user posts a picture of a full pallet of sunflower oil, which he says is from a Swedish supermarket.

He claims: He constantly gets pictures from acquaintances from other European countries and nowhere else, except in Germany, would there be such a food shortage.

"In Denmark, Holland, France, Spain, Poland, almost everywhere" the situation is different.

Sunflower and rapeseed oil are in abundance, he says in a conversation with another user.

What makes him suspicious is that the sunflower oil sold in the Swedish supermarket is German.

The photo shows that it is the Brölio brand.

Hamster purchases aren't the only reason for shortages in the supermarket?: "What's going on here?"

In the six weeks since the beginning of the war, in the approximately six different supermarkets that he visits regularly, he has "never seen even a single liter of sunflower oil", the Facebook user describes the situation in the German supermarkets under his post - somewhat exaggerated - "What's going on here?" he asks the group.

"Maybe the Germans are the only ones stupid enough to pour that into their older diesel?" says another user.

And he has another suggestion: it's just the hamster buyers.

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Professional hamster buyers would buy “by the container from the suppliers”.

However, one could object to the explanation that there is simply more hoarding in Germany than in other countries (corresponding to the cliché of the precautionary, forward-planning German) that the supermarkets are almost always rationing them out.

In any case, the coveted food groups can only be bought in very limited quantities, says the questioner who posted the photo.

This is addressed: “The really big hamster buyers don’t buy in the supermarket.

More like containers from the suppliers who pay a little more than the supermarket chains offer.

This means that they get fewer goods than usual.

You can buy lots of sunflower oil on the Internet,” says the user who provides the attempted explanation.

But even this answer does not really satisfy the questioner: only traders can actually buy "off the pallet".

And the suppliers have at least medium-term supply contracts, which means they can't just sell something to someone else,” he says.

Ultimately, the question remains open: the situation is probably not quite as dramatic as it is portrayed.

Although one rarely sees shelves filled with sunflower oil as shown in the photo (according to the commentary from a Croatian supermarket) in Germany at the moment, one hardly ever hears of weeks of fruitless searches for oil.

It seems possible that the Germans have a slightly stronger tendency to hoard than their European neighbors and that the sales rules are not as effective as desired - control is probably also difficult, especially in the currently often overcrowded supermarkets.

The answer to the German oil in Sweden has so far remained unanswered on Facebook: The fact that Germany is also a large food exporter and that the goods are simply imported from Germany seems obvious.

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