Grocers warn food price hikes inevitable, as Roger Cook says WA is not immune from trade crisis

Australia’s supermarket giants are confident their supply chains won’t be impacted by fuel shortages, but independent grocers are warning extra costs will inevitably be passed on.

Independent Grocers Association WA President John Cummings said it will take a while for any global supply shortages to flow through.

“Normally you’re three months out and six months out in the ordering of (imports) so that’s a long way down the track,” he said.

“The good news is that in Australia, as much as 90 per cent of what we consume is actually locally made, grown and manufactured.”

But he warned some prices would inevitably go up.

“Most loose bananas that people buy in Western Australia, about 90 per cent of all consumed come from Northern Queensland. Now the only way they are transported into Western Australia is by road.

“Now if that truck was going to increase its price to recover its costs by 50 per cent, of course that’s going to go up by $1.20 to $1.80 a kilo, just in transport. Now that will have some effect at the retail price.”

And he predicted regional WA will bear the brunt of it.

“It’s a cost that probably the supermarket, the individual supermarket, is going to wear at the moment, but it will have an effect downstream,” he said.

Inside Perth shops, major grocery retailers were blaming gaps on the shelf on Monday on the weather, not the war.

Aleksandra Markovic said she’s already noticed grocery prices are starting to follow petrol’s upward trend.

“Everything’s increased to be honest,” Ms Markovic said.

“Everything is going up, I don’t know how people are going to afford it (long-term). I think everyone suffers.”

Stocking up on bottled water and other essentials, Ms Markovic said she’s also being punished at the bowser.

“I used to fill up for less than $110, now its $115 to $125,” she said.

Across Perth, it’s pasta shelves that are looking the most empty, closely followed by canned tomatoes and pasta sauces.

Packaged meats like mince and chicken thighs were also running low in some stores, as well as dairy and bulk bottled water.

Some shelves were affixed with notices to customers that the flooding in central Australia was partly to blame, with supply routes via railway cut off.

An expansion of Woolworths Group’s food storage facility near Perth Airport was announced last October, to increase capacity by around 10,000 pallets.

The move aimed to boost resilience, after flooding cut off the Trans-Australian rail line for a record 24 days in 2022, leaving shelves bare across the State.

Roger Cook has warned that the Middle East conflict has sparked a “crisis of international trade”, but he said scheduled fuel supplies are continuing to arrive in WA.

The Premier said the BP import facility in Kwinana, that was an oil refinery until 2021, had started receiving supplies from the national stockpile and is operating at 176 per cent “over and above” its normal output.

“It’s a sign that we are getting those extra fuels that were coming through as a result of the Federal Government’s announcement last week,” Mr Cook said.

Extra supplies are en route to the Goldfields and Great Southern that have been hardest hit by shortages.