The Food and Drug Administration announced measures last week to get more baby formula on the market and soothe the nerves of anxious parents who’ve been facing shortages due to the pandemic and the recall of formula from Abbott Nutrition due to concerns about contamination.
Abbot is one of four companies that makes up 90% of the baby formula market and had to shutter its Michigan production plant. Reportedly, one plant supplied as much as one-fifth of all the infant formula in the country.
Because of the timing of this recall, concerns over the shortage have opened the door to suggestions of alternative methods of production – including diversification of production and more reliance on importing from other countries.
Premise aimed to see how the shortage was reflected in stores across the country to see which brands were affected, where shortages were present, and if pricing had been increased as a result.
We asked 500 of our Contributors to provide photos alongside their surveys to provide a ground-level view of the effect of the shortage. Here are a few trends we uncovered:
92 locations were completely out of stock
Similac and Enfamil were far and away the most available brands
It appears that roughly ¾ of brands have been heavily affected by the supply chain in terms of share-of-shelf, based on the large dropoff between the third most available brand, Good Start.
83% of Contributors noted that baby formula was less available than other products in-store
Though the supply chain shortage is affecting a great variety of businesses and industries at the moment, respondents took note of the scarcity of formula products in stores in comparison to other products in nearby aisles.
76% of Contributors said it was harder to find baby formula this time around than when they made their most recent purchase
Supermarkets boasted the highest level of availability
Much like particular brands took a serious hit, corner stores and specialty stores that aren’t massive chains have little to no access to baby formula at the moment. It seems the only viable options at the moment are primarily supermarkets and big box stores like Target.
We look forward to continuing to monitor the changes these brands make over the coming months to alleviate this current problem and prevent it from happening again.
To learn more, visit www.premise.com.