Supermarket Tesco has introduced the rationing of cooking oil as the Russia-Ukraine war continues to hamper the supply of sunflower oil to the UK food industry, further raising the cost of popular items such as crisps and chips.
Recent reports state that Tesco has introduced a buying limit of three bottles per customer across its entire cooking oil range. Although the retailer says it has good availability of cooking oil, its website shows many kinds of vegetable oils are out of stock.
Most of the UK’s sunflower oil comes from Ukraine and the war has had a devastating impact on availability, leading to more than 20 percent price spike.
Apart from being a kitchen ingredient, sunflower oil is an essential in ready meals, crisps, biscuits and mayonnaise. Due to shortage of sunflower oil, some makers have reportedly switched to rapeseed oil, which in turn has spiked its demand as well as the price.
Tom Lock, founder of The British Snack Company, revealed to The Guardian that since it is increasingly impossible to get sunflower oil, many have secured rapeseed oil by paying three times the price sunflower oil was a year ago.
Lock said it was inevitable that price increases would be passed on to the customer.
The news comes after it was reported that Morrisons and Waitrose have already limited purchases to two per person. Sainsbury’s and Asda have yet to take any action.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said some retailers had put limits on cooking oil purchases “as a temporary measure to ensure availability for everyone”. Andrea Martinez-Inchausti, deputy director of food, said that where sunflower oil had been substituted retailers would “change product labels as soon as possible”.
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