Baby formula stored behind the counter to avoid raiders clearing stock for Chinese buyers
SYDNEY supermarkets are locking baby formula behind the counter alongside cigarettes as retailers go to extraordinary lengths to stop raiders clearing their shelves of tins to sell for huge profits in China.
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SYDNEY supermarkets are locking baby formula behind the counter alongside cigarettes as retailers go to extraordinary lengths to stop raiders clearing their shelves of tins to sell for huge profits in China.
Local mothers have been enraged by profiteers who buy up one kilogram tins of sought-after brands for $25-$35 in Sydney and sell them online or via relatives for around $100 each in China.
Major retailers have already imposed two-can per customer limits to try to keep enough formula on the shelves to feed local babies. Now they taking more extreme measures.
At Coles in Five Dock, A2 Platinum formula has been taken off the shelves and put behind the counter with tobacco and mobile phones. A sign in the formula aisle says the removal was to provide “equal opportunity” to shoppers and to deter theft.
Woolworths is taking similar measures. When The Daily Telegraph visited this week, shelves advertising A2 and Aptamil formula were barren. A staff member said formula was being kept in a locked cage at the back of the store.
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At Woolworths in Top Ryde City Centre and at Lane Cove, signs — in Mandarin and English — left in place of formula referred shoppers to the customer service desk. Mothers have reported shelves in their local stores being completely stripped of formula by shoppers loading carts with nothing but tins of the product. Where two-tin limits are enforced, shoppers claim to have seen people don disguises to get more.
Young Port Macquarie mother Nicole Dean said she’d seen buyers stockpiling the formula she prefers for her daughters, Harper, 1, and Willow, 2.
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“Both my girls are formula fed,” she said. “At one point I wasn’t able to get formula in one of the supermarkets because it was all sold out. I definitely think supermarkets restricting it is a good thing, it makes it more fair for people.”
Sydney mother Tracey Wills said she had been left having to search between stores to find formula for her daughter Ella, nine months.
“It is a pain when you haven’t got enough time to search around for just a bare essential, so you really have to allow extra time to look at three different supermarkets for one item,” she said.
A Coles spokeswoman confirmed some formula was being kept out of aisles so it was available to customers with a “genuine need.”
“In some stores we are keeping infant formula behind the service desk or using specially designed electronic article surveillance lids that can only be removed at the register,” she said. A Woolworths spokesman said the retailer was looking at “new ways to ensure guaranteed stock for families.”
“We are also limiting sales quantities to two units per customer and working with our suppliers on solutions to improve availability for customers,” he said.
University of Sydney Professor of Chinese Business and Management Hans Hendrischke said Australian formula was in such high demand in China because parents have had no confidence in local products since a milk contamination crisis 10 years ago.