Trade strike: Financial expert warns of product shortages before Christmas

Trade strike: Financial expert warns of product shortages before Christmas

According to a report by www.fr.de, certain products have been missing from supermarket shelves for some time and the situation could get even worse before Christmas. The reason for this is ongoing strikes as part of a collective bargaining dispute between trading companies and unions. Products such as fruit and vegetables, meat and sausage products, frozen foods, cosmetics and toilet paper could become scarce due to strikes in central warehouses. The Edeka and Rewe chains, including their subsidiaries Netto and Penny as well as Kaufland, are particularly affected by delivery bottlenecks.

The largest strikes by warehouse and logistics employees are taking place in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria, meaning the effects are said to be felt most strongly there. Countries in the East are also affected, but to a lesser extent. Small and medium-sized stores could be particularly affected as they have less storage space and can hardly take precautions on site to avoid shortages.

Rewe and Edeka have no precise information about which regions and products could be affected by outages in the near future. At Kaufland, regional delivery delays were confirmed, but the supply of goods to customers was fundamentally guaranteed.

The bottlenecks in supermarkets are expected to get even worse towards Christmas. In the upcoming weeks of Advent and during the Christmas shopping season, customers could find themselves in front of incomplete shelves, as even more intense strikes could increase the pressure. Customers are often not happy about changes in the product range and could shop elsewhere, which could have an impact on sales.

The insufficient supply of products in supermarkets could affect consumer trust in companies and lead to a decline in sales. This could have a negative impact on the share prices of the affected trading companies and shake investor confidence. It remains to be seen how long the strikes will last and how companies will respond to them to mitigate the impact on the market and the financial sector.