Supermarkets limit cooking oil sales, and supply issues also hit crisp firm
Fairfields Farm crisps have seen supply issues with sunflower oil - Credit: Fairfields Farm
Supermarkets have placed limits on how much cooking oil customers can buy due to supply-chain problems caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine - while a local crisp maker has also told of the impact.
Tesco is allowed three items per customer while Waitrose and Morrisons have placed limits of just two items each, according to the BBC.
And the managing director of an Essex-based crisp maker has said the company's supplies of sunflower oil dried up "almost overnight" due to the war in Ukraine. The country supplies most of the UK's sunflower oil.
Richard Glennan, of Fairfields Farm in Wormingford, near Colchester, said the company needs around 30,000 litres of sunflower oil per month, and has been forced to now make its crisps in rapeseed oil.
The manufacturer is now making crisps with rape seed oil - Credit: Archant
"We were producing in sunflower oil up until about two or three weeks ago, and a lot of the oil we were using would have been sourced in Ukraine, and almost overnight that source of oil was unavailable to us," he told the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2.
"So we had to make changes and make our crisps in rapeseed oil.
"We're a small privately-owned business making crisps on our farm in Essex from potatoes that we grow so our usage is relatively small compared with the big brands you see in the supermarkets.
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"But we still needed about 30,000 litres a month of sunflower oil and to suddenly find that that wasn't available was quite a challenge for us."
Mr Glennan's comments come as supermarkets across the UK place limits on how much cooking oil can be sold due to supply-chain issues caused by the war.
Supermarkets are limiting purchases of sunflower oil - Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland supermarkets, said his shops were having to ration sunflower oil sales to one bottle per customer.
"It is not as frenzied as the toilet roll panic buying from a couple of years ago, and we are managing to maintain an offer," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"But yes, we are limiting purchases and we've moved into smaller packs to allow existing stocks in the market to service more customers."
