Small town shops starting to feel the pinch of supply shortages

While supermarket shelves in major centres are being stripped bare, most small town shops in the Mid West say their supplies are holding up — for now. “No such thing here,” Mount Magnet IGA Xpress manager Sam Warnapala said. “My allocation is more than enough for a little town. My toilet paper shelves are full.” He said his main concern was the lack of a small selection of meat products, such as lamb chops, which he hasn’t been able to stock recently. “We can’t get in lamb products from the butchers, I’m not really sure why.” Three Springs IGA manager Jude Cruikshank said stocks in her small supermarket were holding up as well, but she expected the situation to change in coming weeks. “Our problems are getting supplies, because people are going crazy in Perth and I guess Geraldton. It’s already started,” she said. Three Springs IGA hasn’t had to impose per-customer limits, but Ms Cruikshank said anyone seen “going overboard” would be asked to put groceries back. “What we need is for people to just be sensible about it,” she said. “What’s toilet paper going to do if you get COVID?” Meekatharra IGA is having no such luck. Manager Jigar Patel said the shop was low on dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt, and he wasn’t sure when stocks would return to normal. “We’re running out of our dairy products. Last week we didn’t receive our shipment of perishables,” he said. “At the moment we’re just waiting for the stock to arrive to see what we have.” While some items have been hard to come by, the usual panic buying targets of toilet paper, pasta and rice are still available at most country shops. Managers are reporting that most WA-made products are also still readily available. However a large portion of stock, from ice cream to cooking oil, comes from the eastern states or international sources. It’s expected the supplies will get worse in local shops once WA’s hard border drops on February 5. With projections of up to 60,000 cases per day coming from Australian Medical Association WA president Mark Duncan Smith, managers predict WA suppliers will be forced into the same situation as those in the east. Major supermarkets in Geraldton have reintroduced buying limits on certain essentials, including toilet paper, painkillers and meat.