Shortages continue to plague grocery stores and now the latest victims appear to be cat food and canned beer.
That’s because aluminum is in short supply right as demand is increasing.
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“We are actually having aluminum demand spikes within the United States and around the world,” said Seckin Ozkul, assistant professor of supply chain management at the University of South Florida.
Ozkul says we can blame labor shortages, the pandemic and the on-going supply chain crisis.
Production isn’t meeting up with demand and China’s pollution crackdown is driving down aluminum manufacturing even further.
“This basically decreased the production by approximately 10-20% worldwide,” Ozkul said.
Ozkul says pet adoptions soared during the pandemic and are still strong raising that demand for cat food and as some retailers take measures to eliminate aluminum packaging.
Aluminum isn’t the only problem cat food sellers are dealing with.
“We don’t have enough meat products that go into that cat food,” Ozkul said. “And the main reason really for this is our workforce.”
The aluminum shortage and price increases are also having a major impact on small breweries across the country.
Demand for aluminum canned products skyrocketed during the pandemic as alcohol consumption rose and breweries shifted to to-go models.
“Pretty much everything has gotten more expensive, most notably our packaging, the aluminum cans, lids and really anything we use connected to the product,” said Kyle Cebull, CEO of Millennial Brewing.
Experts predict this is an issue that may linger for several more months and well into 2023.