Toilet Paper? Relax, We've Got You Covered!

"We are expecting an increase in demand, but we don’t anticipate that it will be as high as the beginning of COVID-19." 

"The biggest issue is whether restaurants will close. That will affect demand at the grocery stores significantly."

"We all need to do a better job of reassuring Canadians that we'll have more [product in stock]. You don't need to panic buy We'll make more."

Av Maharaj, chief administrative officer, Kraft Heinz

As the second wave of SARS-CoV-2 engulfs Ontario and Quebec, food retailers have noticed once again that shoppers are beginning to stock up on some items. Flour, it appears is one of them, and another is -- as puzzling now as it was during the first wave -- toilet paper. Why toilet people, why is the public insecure about, of all things, toilet paper? This puzzle has caused many to wonder, and though there have been some guesses no one can quite be certain. Perhaps other than herd instinct when something is noticed leaving supermarket shelves that compels others to follow suit. The public is not, after all, known for deep thinking, and illogical group acts are not otherwise unknown.

The hottest quarantine commodities include paper products, water, canned goods, rice, pasta, baby food, disinfectants and household cleaning products, baking supplies, milk, eggs and over-the-counter medicine. April 2020   Photo by Carlos Osorio/Reuters

"[The worst impact, if demand increases, might be that] they just may not have the product I want on the day I go in."

"Certainly, I'm less worried today than I was in March. We kind of got caught off guard in the first wave."

Michael Graydon, chief executive, Food Health, Consumer Products of Canada

 

"We are starting to see slight increases in shopping behaviour in regions where COVID cases are rising, indicating that families are planning to spend more time eating at home."

"Although you may see an empty shelf, from time to time, rest assured more product is on the way and it will only be for a very short period of time [shelves being empty, before they're re-stocked]."

Jacquelin Weatherbee, spokesperson, Empire Co.Ltd.

 

So, then will that reassurance from food processing and manufacturing corporations have the desired effect? The very fact that the public has been of late and continues to think in herms of stockpiling to face the oncoming prospect of another lockdown has them working feverishly to build their inventories against demand surges with the second wave of COVID-19 impacting on parts of Canada. A level of hoarding comparable to the spring isn't being contemplated by food manufacturers and supermarkets similar to what occurred at the pandemic's outset, but steadily increasing daily case counts have had an identifiable impact.

In Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces with the greatest number of cases and deaths due to     COVID, reports of leaps in demand for what is recognized as 'pandemic staples' -- toilet paper and flour -- have alerted both the manufacturers and the retail grocery outlets. An example is Kraft Heinz Canada stockpiling extra stock of Kraft Dinner, that perennial favourite quick-meal-in-a-box, anticipating the second COVID wave. The company pre-pandemic normally kept a three-and-a-half-week-worth of Kraft Dinner as 'safety stock' warehoused to enable it to fill orders should demand surge.

 

The supply failed to last beyond April  however, leading the company to temporarily cut production of some niche products in favour of proceeding with the emergency production of Kraft Dinner to fill the gap in consumer expectations. Since then, bearing in mind their previous experience, the Montreal plant built a much larger safety stock; 4.6 million boxes of Kraft Dinner, eight weeks' worth of normal demand, and the company has taken steps to expand safety stocks of other in-demand, shelf-stable products that enjoy wide popularity.

The main industry association remains unconvinced that the second wave will cause major issues since suppliers have put on additional shifts at manufacturing facilities, working toward building inventories for their warehouses, along with warehouses linked to food retailers. Manufacturers and retailers saw a need this spring to reconsider the norms of supply chains where in Canada the focus had been on producing an exact-as-possible 'right' amount of products "just-in-time", a method of cutting down on warehousing costs.

The fact was that even during the most panicked days of the pandemic the past spring, the supply chain never failed though it did struggle to move food from warehouse to stores as expeditiously as was required. The issue was never one of inadequate supply, but rather of too-slow delivery. For shoppers, it was all the same; irrespective of the cause, they were looking at shelves bare of products and that was enough to cause panic and hoarding. 

Canada's second-largest grocery chain is working with its suppliers to increase inventory of "key items we know Canadians have been looking for throughout the pandemic", explained Empire Co.Ltd,; items that included toilet paper and flour. Of course. The country's largest supermarket chain stressed that it is "not worried about running out of food". Both Loblaw Cos.Ltd. and Empire leave open the possibility they could reinstate per-customer limits on in-demand products should circumstances deem it necessary to do so.

"We're making the preparations our customers would expect, including increasing inventories and limiting purchases in some very specific cases", advised Catherine Thomas, Loblaw spokesperson. Irving Consumer Products Ltd., a manufacturer of toilet paper and paper towels has not been successful in restoring inventory levels as a result of the fact that demand for paper towels is still elevated, and toilet paper demand remains higher than normal, albeit slightly less than the peak early in the year.

"We continue to run all assets and optimize our runs to support our existing customers on household towel and other essential tissue products", stated Irving, of its Royale brand paper towel and toilet paper, adding that though inventories have recovered marginally, they remain "far from pre-COVID-[19 levels" despite production facilities running all lines, with added staff and overtime.

Grocers and their suppliers don't appear to be expecting the same level of hoarding that they saw at the outset of the pandemic this spring, but some are already seeing a jump in demand for some items. Photo by Getty Images

How Gradual to Re-Emerge From Lockdown?

"The lockdown was never intended to be permanent, it's clearly not possible. So ideally we would like to get it down by using a vaccine, and we call that herd immunity."
"We don't have a vaccine and we're quite far from natural herd immunity and it doesn't look like we can eliminate it. So the conclusion from that is that the second wave really is a clear and present danger."
"Containment is what the U.K. was trying to do right at the beginning of this epidemic. Intensive surveillance, large-scale screening, effective contact tracing, isolation of cases, quarantining of those exposed, quarantine screening of international arrivals and some residual social distancing."
"That is a possible new normal and if we don't like [it] we're going to have to find other ways of living with COVID-19 because it's not going away any time soon."
Mark Woolhouse, University of Edinburgh

The kitchen at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel is shown in this undated handout photo. Handout photo by Oak Bay Beach Hotel

Governments are, reasonably enough, concerned about their falling GDP, the state of their economy, the skyrocketing of unemployment and how long their populations will be able to withstand lockdown conditions with no sign of a potential vaccine in the near future, and how the months of social distancing will affect people's mental health. There have been numerous displays of public discontent, with demonstrations where social distancing has been respected and participants have been face-masked, but people are demanding that social life be re-established.

The decision -- almost universally applied across the globe -- for lockdown once the global pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization had an instant impact. People lost their livelihoods, businesses closed, and the destructive consequences were seen in an expansion of clients for food bank assistance, and panicked parents hardly knowing how to care for children who could no longer attend school; mental health issues loomed large, concerning the medical profession even as local health clinics were shut along with libraries and gyms.

Barbershops outside the Montreal and Joliette areas of Quebec will be able to open as of June 1. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

While many nations -- including those hardest struck by the shock of wholesale infection rates, crowded ICUs, incapacitated hospitals with inadequate personal protective equipment for vulnerable hospital workers, and a rising death rate among the health-vulnerable and the elderly living in long-term care establishments -- began loosening restrictions that led to social distancing and orders to remain isolated at  home, there are concerns over moving too swiftly, over not opening quickly enough, over possible consequences to one or the other.

Of those countries which had already undertaken a loosening of restrictions in the hope of yet rescuing their economies from their new, dismal performance, and their populations from declining physical and mental health, an uptick in infections led to a reversal of the situation and a reimposition of some lockdown restrictions in the hopes of preventing a second, possibly even deadlier wave of COVID infections.

A situation that saw Japan, China, South Korea, Lebanon, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Pakistan reverse their decision on re-opening, forced by circumstances to return to strict restrictions on localized quarantines and in some instances, widespread shutdowns in reaction to a spurt of new infections in the restriction-loosed environment.

Close to six and a half million people globally have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Data recently released from the Office for National Statistics hint that the infection rate is most likely markedly higher reflecting that many people are asymptomatic. Dr.Hans Kluge, director of the World Health Organization's Europe desk, warned European countries that a deadly second wave is in all likelihood on the way, that now is the "time for preparation, not celebration".

Experts say lifting lockdown measures without a clear picture of where new cases are coming from, as Ontario and Quebec are doing, is cause for concern. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)