After a brief respite during which cottage cheese, white cheese, and yogurt returned to retail chain shelves, cottage cheese and white cheese are once again nearly impossible to find. Retailers are complaining that they order large quantities of stock but receive small amounts, if any at all.
According to food industry sources, the supply problem this time stems from a shortage of workdays during the holiday period, rather than the computer glitch that disrupted operations at the Tnuva plant in Alon Tavor. That glitch, which began in early July and lasted more than two months, caused a severe cottage cheese shortage. Consumers unable to find cottage cheese switched to buying white cheese, creating a shortage of that product as well. Industry experts estimate that stock gaps will be closed and supply will return to normal over the next two days.
"Yom Kippur fell on Sunday and Monday of last week, coming after Friday and Saturday, which meant almost four days without production," a market source said. "Then in that same week there were only 3.5 production days, which reduced the ability to meet demand volumes. We only returned to continuous production last week."
How the cottage cheese shortage began
The cottage cheese shortage originally began following a malfunction in the automated warehouse system at Tnuva's Alon Tavor plant. Cottage cheese was produced and packaged as usual, but the system responsible for loading pallets onto distribution trucks failed to function properly, preventing part of the supply from leaving the dairy plant and reaching store shelves.
The disruptions lasted more than two months, during which Tnuva employees operated parts of the system manually while technicians from the German company Dematic attempted to assist remotely. According to Tnuva, the system glitch has already been fixed and production had returned to normal, but then the succession of holidays arrived and shortages returned.
Compounding the situation is an approximately 4% increase in demand for dairy products since the beginning of the year. Food market sources explained that when demand is high and the number of production days is low, it is difficult to make up missing quantities quickly.