Kolkata: Supply of milk, atta, oil faces lockdown heat

KOLKATA: The government has kept food and grocery items on the exempted list during lockdown, but production of edible oil, milk, soap, handwash and biscuits have already started suffering a serious jolt.
All leading manufacturers are witnessing shortage of packaging material, workers and transporters since Monday itself. Most units have already cut down on production and some others may follow suit in the next few days, which is likely to lead to a shortage of food and other items.

Sources in FMCG industry indicated that ITC’s production of food items like biscuits, packaged atta, noodles and items like handwash, soap, sanitizers has been affected nationally, including West Bengal (for last one day).
The ITC factories in Panchla and Uluberia, which mainly manufacture food products, have been shut down since Monday evening. It is now waiting for clarification before resuming work at these facilities.
An ITC spokesperson said: “While it is extremely critical to ensure adoption of precautionary measures, including hand hygiene, social distancing and isolation during this period, it is also important that during such challenging times, essential products are made available to consumers. As various state governments issue notifications, we are in discussions with them to ensure that manufacturing and distribution of essential products are streamlined.”
“In many states, production of noodles, packaged atta have been stopped. Some noodle plants in West Bengal, that supply to big multinational brands, have stopped production following lack of packaging material and non availability of workforce,” an official from food industry said.
He explained that number of people going to factory has also gone down drastically in the state from Monday. “The workers are saying no public transport is available to come to factory.” According to the official, the distributors are also facing it difficulty in bringing products to their warehouses.
The director of Emami Ltd, Aditya Agarwal told TOI that it has three edible oil plants in the country. Out of which, Rajasthan plant was shut following this lockdown.
The West Bengal plant is working since we have got permission as essential supply but at 20% of the capacity.
“The problem is lack of labour force and transportation. Edible oil not only needed for cooking but is the raw material for biscuit, cake, breads,” he added. The production of processed milk in the state have also been affected due to lack of packaging material and workers.
Incidentally, Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has appealed to both centre and state government to find ways of extending the ‘support products and services list’ of non-essentials to ensure availability of essentials.