Milk shortage after supply issue at Fonterra factory

This notice was posted at an Auckland supermarket. Photo / APNZ

Milk lovers across the upper North Island have been left thirsty this week following a supply issue at Fonterra's Takanini factory.

Fonterra spokesman Daniel Wrigley said Fonterra's fresh milk supply chain was disrupted by a water supply issue at the Takanini factory late last week.

Anchor and Home Brand fresh milk products were affected.

"It's meant that we temporarily had a bit of disruption to the production and delivery of the fresh milk out of there," Mr Wrigley said.

"There's been a bit of a shortage, but we're catching up now."

The water was used mainly for cleaning the plant, however milk quality and food safety was at no point compromised, he said.

Supply was affected from Sunday until Tuesday, however some supermarkets in the outlying areas of the region may still be waiting for their fresh milk deliveries to arrive, Mr Wrigley said.

Foodstuffs spokeswoman Antoinette Shallue said New World, PAK'nSAVE and Four Square supermarkets in the upper North Island experienced fresh milk, flavoured milk and cream supply issues of private label and Fonterra branded products on Tuesday.

"Supply was re-initiated late Tuesday with full supply resuming on Wednesday.

"This was due to an issue raised by Fonterra over the weekend which resulted in their supply chain being affected.

"There was a slight impact at store but this was managed to ensure disruption to customers was kept to a minimum.

"We had one customer complaint that I am aware of, where product at a single store was restricted to one unit per customer."

The restriction lasted for a two-hour period when customers were restricted to purchasing one cream and one milk product of any size, Ms Shallue said.

"This restriction was then lifted and customers were simply advised of the shortage until supply returned to normal."

A number of stores sold out of some milk lines, however details of the stores affected were not available, Ms Shallue said.

A Countdown spokeswoman said there was one day this week when Fonterra milk wasn't delivered, "but we had other milk stock on hand so this didn't impact our customers".