Sugar shortage impact felt as refinery strike continues

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This article was published 23/11/2023 (702 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This holiday season may be a little less sweet.

Winnipeg businesses are feeling a sugar shortage as a strike at a Rogers Sugar refinery in Vancouver nears its third month.

“Certain items like sugar cubes, we haven’t been able to get in,” said Kevin Schmidt, co-owner of Downtown Family Foods.

Brown sugar is largely out of reach. Bags of white sugar have been coming, but even so, the grocery store’s sugar section is feeling “more empty.”

Sugar shipments are inconsistent and difficult to get, Schmidt relayed. He’s concerned with the shortage’s timing.

“You are getting close to the holidays,” he noted. “People like to do a lot of holiday baking for family and friends.”

The cost of sugar for Downtown Family Foods has increased, but it isn’t a standout compared to other grocery price surges, Schmidt stated.

He hasn’t noticed any stockpilers yet.

However, he hasn’t encountered Belinda Bigold and her husband. The High Tea Bakery owner has loaded up on bags of white and icing sugar.

“I just don’t want to take any chances,” she said, noting icing sugar hasn’t been identified as part of the shortage.

She recalled a few years earlier, where her Portage Avenue bakery couldn’t make its imperial cookies due to a lack of jam.

“We can’t be out of these ingredients,” she said. “You’re not going to go and tell all your customers you can’t make their cookies for Christmas because you’ve run out of sugar.”

Her team outputs roughly three months’ worth of baking over three weeks in December, she said.

She called suppliers earlier this week and learned they expected to run out of sugar soon. That’s when she began stockpiling.

Staff are pre-making icings and doughs for the holiday season; customers have pre-ordered treats.

They purchased goods before High Tea Bakery saw a new, large jump in the price of sugar, Bigold said.

“We can’t change our prices now,” she explained. “Hopefully this is short-lived and the price goes back down, and then it’ll just be a blip (in profit) that you eat.”

It comes after consistent operating cost increases from all directions and years of altered business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of our nuts have gone up, all of our sugars have gone up, all of our oils have gone up,” Bigold listed. “It’s getting very difficult to keep up.”

The sugar shortage may mean fewer treats, or missing types, in the bakery’s front counter, she added.

Nearly 140 Rogers Sugar refinery workers began striking Sept. 28. The union cites wages, benefits and the company’s proposal to increase refinery production to every day, 24-7, as reasons for strike action.

Rogers Sugar Inc. said the plant still operates, though at a reduced level. It’s using other facilities to produce sugar for western Canada.

Rogers Sugar also owns a Montreal refinery. It markets its products under the brands Rogers and Lantic.

Supply impacts of brown sugar and some packaged white sugar are being felt in western Canada, Jean-Sebastian Couillard, Rogers Sugar’s chief financial officer, confirmed to the Canadian Press.

However, there’s “ample supply” of other products, including bulk sugars use by bigger food processors and liquid sugars, he said.

— with files from The Canadian Press

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com