The shortage of baby milk substitutes in the US: Danone has tripled shipments to the US

by time news

Danone, the maker of the formula for optimal babies, has increased the shipments of the formula from Europe to the US, Reuters reports according to information from the US Customs and the shipping consulting company Ocean Audit, which analyzed the cargo data.

Read more in Calcalist:

Danone, the second-largest maker of baby formula in the world but a relatively small player in the U.S. market, sent a large portion of its products from the UK and the Netherlands by sea, following Abbott’s Feb. 17 recall, which was the trigger for U.S. shortages.

Between January and May, Danone’s nutrition unit more than tripled its exports by sea to North America, with more than 90 percent of it shipped to the U.S., said Ocean Audit CEO Steve Ferrara.

The shortage of TAML in the U.S. has been going on for months, and has begun due to disruptions in supply chains caused by the plague. But the situation worsened in February when Abbott, one of the U.S.’s leading manufacturers of baby milk substitutes, recalled some of the products and was forced to close a plant in Michigan that produces Similac and other brands.

The FDA has argued that the reason for the recall is the discovery in the factory of a bacterium that could be fatal to infants. Abbott denied that the substitute from her product was what caused the hospitalization of four babies. Since the recall, there have been reports of empty shelves in supermarkets across the U.S. and stories of parents being forced to travel for hours to remote branches in hopes of finding the product.

“We understand how important it is for families to be able to purchase the special formulas, which is why its priority is to increase the production and supply of these medical formulas,” said a Danone spokesman.

On May 10, three days before US President Joe Biden presented his crisis resolution plan, the Independent Quest ship sailed from Philadelphia with 42,000 boxes of Danone’s formula on board. It was urgently shipped to Jeffersonville, Indiana, where the formulas were distributed to retailers. “If it goes into port at most two seconds, I’m almost sure it’s going to reach them by Tuesday or Wednesday, because that product is so in demand,” Ferrara said in January-May. This year, Danone Nutrition sent about 2.4 million Formula One packages to North America – compared to 770,000 in the same period last year.

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