Grocery giant Tesco is the latest supermarket to ration cooking oil in the wake of the ongoing Ukraine crisis.
Rival chains Waitrose and Morrisons have already announced they were rationing shoppers, as supplies become more difficult, forcing up the price by around 20% compared to last year. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has choked off supplies of sunflower oil to the UK's food industry, as most of the UK's sunflower oil comes from Ukraine.
In order to preserve stocks for everyone, Tesco will now only allow shoppers to buy three bottles of cooking oil per person across its entire range. The UK’s biggest retailer has said it has good availability of cooking oil, but on its website a small number of vegetable oils are out of stock, including 3L bottles of sunflower oil.
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The move is more generous than Waitrose and Morrisons, both of which limited cooking oils to two bottles per person this week..
As well as being a cupboard staple, sunflower oil is also found in hundreds of products from biscuits, crisps, mayonnaise and ready meals, and is hitting food manufacturing.
Les Graham, owner of popcorn manufacturer Sweet&Savoury in Consett, County Durham, said corn and oil were the two key ingredients in the products his factory produces.
Although the main oil used is rapeseed oil, Les said the shortage of sunflower oil was pushing prices of rapeseed up to nearly double compared to last year, as manufacturers switch from sunflower oil.
"Everything in our cost base has gone up, from ingredients to energy," said Les. "There is nothing in this factory today that is not costing more than it did last year."
To help food manufacturers keep their products on sale, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has said suppliers can switch to using rapeseed oil and allow their labels to catch up, and advised shoppers to look out for stickers on packets and on shelves explaining any recipe change.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said some retailers had put limits on cooking oil purchases “as a temporary measure to ensure availability for everyone”. Andrea Martinez-Inchausti, deputy director of food, said that where sunflower oil had been substituted retailers would “change product labels as soon as possible”.
Walkers crisps announced earlier this month that it would be switching from sunflower to rapeseed oil as a temporary measure, following the shortage of sunflower oil. PepsiCo, which owns the Walkers brand and other favourites such as Wotsits, Doritos and Quavers, said: "Due to widespread disruption to the supply of sunflower oil, we will be adjusting the blend of oil used to cook some of our crisps.
"We currently use a blend of sunflower and rapeseed oils and may at times need to switch to refined rapeseed oil depending on the supply situation over the coming weeks. This will not impact the quality of taste of the crisps."
In normal times, substitutions are forbidden by the FSA to prevent allergic reactions.
The regulator said it could not rule out allergic reactions from the relaxation of the rules, but said that by replacing sunflower oil with rapeseed oil the risk was “very low” and reactions should be “mild”.
Customers should nonetheless check food labels and look out for additional information provided by retailers and manufacturers “to stay informed”, it said.
