Milk shortage: rationing costing grocers their small clienteles

Maltese grocers and their clients have been bearing the brunt of the island’s milk shortage, as a combination of summer heat and population growth have contributed to lower milk availability over the past two months.  

Malta’s milk shortage problem was described as “severe” by several stores who say their deliveries have been cut by at least half by the distributors, who are separate from national milk producers Benna.  

Benna has blamed the shortage of milk on the fact that cows “naturally produce less milk” during the summer months and on an increase in demand for fresh milk.  

Over the week, grocery stores visited by MaltaToday said the milk shortage over the past three weeks was starting to “define” the way they run their business.  

“The distributor usually hands me a supply of 116 cartons,” said one Birkirkara storeowner, who caters for a significant part of the Ta’ Paris area. He is now being given just eight cartons a day. “Us small storekeepers suffer the most. PAVI, Lidl, Smart and I am losing business to Smart because of this issue are somewhat immune to the shortage.”  

Pointing to the empty space in his store’s fridge, the storekeeper said that on finding the depleted supply his customers were taking their business elsewhere. “Customers would rather get all their supplies from one place. My inability to provide milk has wider repercussions.”  

And he said he was unable to ration the supply because his supplies are so limited, but this is what other stores are doing.  

Another convenience store in Birkirkara said that for the past three weeks, milk supplies to the store had been cut by half.  

“We haven’t been receiving any flavoured milk at all. People are resorting to buying foreign long-life milk,” the store manager said.  

She has been giving regular customers only half their usual request. “We’ve had to ration because otherwise we run out of milk by noon for the constant customers... some have tried to over-purchase milk, attempting to buy eight instead of the usual four. It’s like we’re at war.”  

Another Birkirkara store reported the obvious absence of milk products such as flavoured milk and half their usual stock: a delivery of 82 cartons instead of 164.  

“On occasion there can be some spillage or damaged cartons. Besides rationing, I’ve had to hide a few cartons. I keep a small supply in a fridge in the back for regular customers. I have no choice. It’s not even noon yet and I’m already out of milk.”  

And though he is aware that the shortage is partly due to cows producing less milk in the summer months, he believes that raising the price of milk would be ultimately beneficial.  

“This is a cheap product. Raising its value, even slightly, might prevent waste and over-consumption.” 

One medium-size store in Birkirkara, whose owner happens to be a milk distributor, paraded its invulnerability to the milk shortage problem when MaltaToday asked about the issue.  

“We cannot possibly be suffering the effects of the shortage,” the manager said, “since the owner of this store is a milk distributor as well.”  

This particular case reveals the endeavours on the part of distributors who play favourites with certain stores and, according to some storekeepers, keeping supermarkets better stocked than smaller stores, which do not enjoy the same credit lines as bigger players.  

Brian Vella, the president of the Milk Producers Cooperative, told MaltaToday that the price of milk had not gone up for six whole years. “I’m not saying that it should go up but there should be a discussion on where we should go from here.”  

Vella, a farmer himself who works at the state-of-the-art dairy farm at Tal-Balal in San Gwann, said the milk shortage was due to cows producing less milk during the hot months of the year, with the produce unable to cater for an increase in population, especially because of an influx of foreigners during the summer months.  

“The farm has 200 cows and 180 calves right now. But you can never have enough cows,” he said, “as long as there’s limited space.”  

Local milk is collected daily from around 63 dairy farms in Malta and another 32 in Gozo.  

Vella disputed that the slaughter of cows for meat had a hand in the shortage. “It’s more profitable to run a milk operation than a meat operation. So it’s not because milk-potential cows are slaughtered. Butchering cows that can still provide good quality milk for their meat is simply unreasonable.”  

Vella praised Benna for its fresh milk production, saying the company would never consider importing milk.  “Importing milk would mean that the company would break its promise of providing the best local produce.”