Retail woes: Goods languish in city warehouses

Two days after heavy rains lashed Mumbai for the second time in a week, many warehousing and distribution channels for consumer goods were still in the doldrums. Supply chain activity, that was just about recovering from last Tuesday's downpour, went haywire yet again.

Mohan Pusalkar, executive director and president, foods division, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, said: "Apart from our warehouses in Mumbai city and Bhiwandi getting damaged, whatever was dispatched to distributors is also in trouble as their godowns have been water logged as well. Transportation is another problem as many of the trucks are damaged and still stranded on the road".

Pusalkar said that supplies were expected to return to normal only by Monday next. He also said pointed out that stocks were now being shifted to relatively safer warehousing points as a precautionary measure to avoid any further crises.

The company's edible oil operations in the Wadala factory, however, have returned to normal after some disruption in the past few days.

Meanwhile, retailers in some parts of the city complained of short supply of items like cartoned milk.

When contacted, R S Sodhi, general manager-marketing, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) said that transporters were showing some amount of reluctance to take goods to Maharashtra.

Nadia Chauhan, marketing head, Parle Agro, said: "Retail outlets on the ground floor have lost goods to the tune of thousands of rupees, some of the bigger ones have lost in lakhs. Given the situation, we expect that they will not be in a position to buy the usual amount of stocks atleast for the next few days."

For supply chain activity to come completely back to normal it should take at least three to four days".

Many retail outlets in the city remained shut even today. Even as distributor activity remained irregular, those retailers who did open shop had to go personally to the wholesale points to directly pick up the goods.

Many were still in the process of cleaning out the water and debris from the previous day, and disposing off spoilt perishables.