Far from Ukraine, Indonesia's favourite noodles run out of stock
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Loading... - Emma Endris
- 22 Mar 2022
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Medan, Indonesia – For the last week, Indonesian minimarket employee Muhammad Nasir has been busy fielding inquiries.
Customers in Medan, North Sumatra all want to know the same thing: Why are there hardly any Indomie instant noodles left on the shelves?
“People have been coming up to us and asking why there isn’t any Indomie left,” Nasir told Al Jazeera. “We still have stocks of some other brands, but Indomie is by far the most popular and we have not had any new deliveries in recent weeks. We don’t know what to tell them.”
Shops all over the city have been affected, with many down to their last few packets, Nasir said.
One of Indonesia’s best-loved foodstuffs, Indomie bills itself as “the pioneer of instant noodles in Indonesia” and produces some 19 billion packs annually for sale in more than 100 countries.
But now, the war in Ukraine, one of Indonesia’s biggest suppliers of wheat, has raised fears for the supply of the snack, which is made from wheat flour. So far, the impact of the conflict on Indonesia’s wheat supply remains unclear, although anecdotal evidence from local shops and restaurants suggests products made from the staple are becoming harder to find.
Ukraine exported nearly 3 million tonnes of wheat and meslin – a cereal comprising a mixture of wheat and rye – to Indonesia in 2020, making it the top supplier of the grain to the country, according to Indonesia’s National Statistics Bureau. That same year, Argentina exported 2.63 million tonnes of wheat and meslin to the Southeast Asian country, while nearby Australia provided almost 831,000 tonnes .Read More...
