Is the food industry affected by the coronavirus sars-cov-2?

The world has once again become acquaint­ed with a so-called coro­n­avirus. Many peo­ple will sure­ly remem­ber the SARS out­break in 2003 or the MERS out­break in 2012. Coronavirus is an umbrel­la term for a virus fam­i­ly that orig­i­nates in wildlife. The lat­est in the line is sars-cov-2, which got its name from the English term ‘coro­n­avirus dis­ease 201’. Media report­ing is main­ly about the num­ber of sick and dead and how the virus is spread­ing to new places around the world. But what is the sit­u­a­tion in the food indus­try; has the virus been acti­vat­ed with full force even in our area? We will dis­cuss the food indus­try and the effects of the virus out­break in this article.

Risk of infection handling goods

The food indus­try today is a glob­al indus­try. Even in the seem­ing­ly local­ly pro­duced prod­uct, you can find ingre­di­ents and addi­tives that orig­i­nate else­where. The ingre­di­ents of these ingre­di­ents and addi­tives can, in turn, come from anoth­er place. Therefore, there is a risk of find­ing prod­ucts where parts of the con­tent come from coun­tries, or areas where the coro­n­avirus is found.

Therefore, the ques­tion nat­u­ral­ly comes to mind whether the coro­n­avirus can accom­pa­ny ingre­di­ents and addi­tives in the glob­al sup­ply chain of food pro­duc­tion, thus spread­ing to new places.

How is it for exam­ple with prod­uct pack­ag­ing. Can an enve­lope car­ry the dread­ed virus?

Based on what we cur­rent­ly know about the virus, it is unlike­ly that the virus can be trans­mit­ted from one sur­face to a human being, for exam­ple from a pal­let, or prod­uct pack­ag­ing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is still not entire­ly known how long the virus can sur­vive out in the open. However, the expe­ri­ence of pre­vi­ous coro­n­avirus out­breaks indi­cates that they do not sur­vive very long on, for exam­ple, let­ters, pack­ages, or oth­er goods. Receiving, for exam­ple, an enve­lope is thus with­out risk, accord­ing to WHO.

Stops in the supply chain

But are there oth­er con­se­quences that go beyond the risk of infection?

The nuclear acci­dent in Fukushima is a telling exam­ple of unfor­tu­nate chain effects. What start­ed as an earth­quake became a nuclear acci­dent, which in turn affect­ed the indus­try and the sup­ply chain. Factories pro­duc­ing com­po­nents for flash mem­o­ry were con­cen­trat­ed in the dis­as­ter zone. As a result, the price of flash dri­ves increased by 20 percent.

The idea that a virus out­break can have sim­i­lar con­se­quences is not very far away. In addi­tion to human suf­fer­ing in the form of ill­ness and, at worst, death, indi­rect con­se­quences can be quite problematic.

In recent weeks we have read about ship­ping, logis­tics and sup­ply chains that are in many cas­es, more or less still. This is because peo­ple who usu­al­ly work in fac­to­ries and in agri­cul­ture are quar­an­tined, or entire com­mu­ni­ties that are almost shut down.

In addi­tion, many car­go ships from oth­er coun­tries are pro­hib­it­ed from dock­ing to the Chinese ports they usu­al­ly vis­it. Instead, they are now out on the open sea await­ing the course of events.

The food industry

But what about the food indus­try? Although there is no direct dan­ger in han­dling goods, there may be oth­er fac­tors that affect trade in affect­ed areas, such as the fact that, as a food pro­duc­er, you trade in raw mate­ri­als from China.

Is this some­thing that food man­u­fac­tur­ers have begun to think about? It doesn’t seem that way. At least not in Sweden. According to the Swedish indus­try orga­ni­za­tion, Livsmedelsföretagen, no mem­bers have expressed con­cern or asked ques­tions about the coro­n­avirus in terms of direct or indi­rect consequences.

But have com­pa­nies in the food indus­try them­selves been affected?

We have asked the two largest gro­cery stores in Sweden if they have noticed any con­se­quences in their oper­a­tions, as a result of the coro­n­avirus. For exam­ple, if there as been stops or delays in the sup­ply chain. Both gro­cery stores also have their own brands and prod­ucts, in a vari­ety of prod­uct categories.

The food chain ICA could not answer our ques­tions about whether their prod­ucts are indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the virus outbreak.

ICA’s clos­est com­peti­tor Coop says that they are not sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed at present, as a very small part of their food is pro­duced in China. Furthermore, they fol­low the Swedish Food Agency’s rec­om­men­da­tions. There is cur­rent­ly no indi­ca­tion that the virus can be spread through food, accord­ing to Coop.

According to Coop, it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict how this will devel­op. They say they are pre­pared by fol­low­ing the events close­ly and con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing to reduce their vulnerability.

It could be prob­lem­at­ic to extrap­o­late the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Sweden with the rest of Europe. But our find­ings offer a hint of the sta­tus and prepa­ra­tion among busi­ness­es in the food industry.

The coming months

If the virus is spread­ing in Europe, there is an immi­nent risk that the sup­ply chain of both raw mate­ri­als and oth­er goods will be affect­ed. There have been reports of a lack of con­tain­ers, which affects com­pa­nies in the auto­mo­tive and cloth­ing indus­try in particular.

The virus is spread­ing in real-time and the ques­tions we ask our­selves now can quick­ly become out­dat­ed or irrel­e­vant. Although the virus does not appear to have any con­se­quences for the food indus­try at present, the sit­u­a­tion can change rapid­ly if the virus spreads in Europe.

Possible con­se­quences in the European food indus­try are lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, as it becomes more dif­fi­cult and expen­sive to obtain raw materials.

Another effect is if the logis­tics and trans­port indus­try is affect­ed in a sim­i­lar way as in China, where boats can­not dock to ports. But even trans­port on land can poten­tial­ly be affect­ed if trucks can­not trav­el through virus-affect­ed areas.

When a pan­dem­ic starts to fade out, prob­lems can also arise. When man­u­fac­tur­ing and trans­porta­tion are going back to nor­mal, there may be a pent-up need that cre­ates bot­tle­necks and dri­ves up costs.

If there is cause for con­cern depends on what hap­pens in the com­ing weeks or months. From a food per­spec­tive, there is rea­son to fol­low the events closely.

Does Bayn have raw materials from China?

Bayn buys some raw mate­ri­als from China. For exam­ple, in China, some of the ste­vias we cul­ti­vate and sell under the NAVIA brand is grown and used in our sweet­ened fibre EUREBA. Therefore, we close­ly mon­i­tor the events and keep our dis­trib­u­tors and direct cus­tomers informed of our actions. We fol­low the rec­om­men­da­tions of the World Health Organization (WHO) and EU authorities.