Distributor: Don’t panic buy

One of Cayman’s leading distributors has assured that there are enough sanitisation products available to meet customers’ demands, and supplementary orders have already been issued to beef up local stocks.

“We are ahead of this. We saw this coming three weeks ago when it started trending and we started putting things in place for our staff, as well as our clients,” Dax Foster, Progressive Distributors’ chief operating officer, told the Cayman Compass Friday.

He said Progressive has a monthly roll-over cycle for the products it supplies, but “we have made supplementary orders to up the supply”.

Foster’s comments come as Premier Alden McLaughlin announced Friday that Cabinet has agreed to a duty waiver on all hand sanitisers, face masks and surgical gloves.

“The waiver is effective immediately and runs through to the end of 2020. I encourage merchants to pass on these savings to the consumer,” the premier said in his address at the Royal Fidelity Cayman Economic Outlook 2020 conference.

He said while Cayman can minimise risk, “we cannot eliminate it. Therefore, we are also preparing for the worst. Make no mistake, if there is a significant outbreak here, it will have a potentially devastating effect on the health of the nation and the economy.”

While there are no confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Cayman Islands, the premier said, “Clearly, there is considerable risk” that the islands will see coronavirus cases locally.

Foster said distributors have noted that items like Clorox wipes, hand sanitisers, Ecolab products, and cold and flu medicine have been moving “extremely rapidly” off local shelves.

“That is an indication that local consumers are taking this very seriously. They are not waiting, which I think is a smart thing to do,” he said.

Foster said his team at Progressive have also been topping up local restaurants and hotels with Ecolab dispensers and hygiene products.

“We have seen an uptick in that for hotels and restaurants [and that is] a good thing because it shows indications that local merchants are also taking those things seriously, and another good indicator that they are committed to keeping customers safe,” he said.

While Foster said that there are supplies on island, multiple grocery stores in Grand Cayman are rationing their cleaning and hand sanitising products because demand for such items, as well as surgical masks, has skyrocketed in the wake of the global coronavirus outbreak.

Foster’s supermarket stated on its website Friday that in order to ensure products are available for as many people as possible, it is limiting the purchase of specific disinfectant products to two per customer.

“For example, two Clorox Lemon Disinfecting Wipes and two Equaline hand sanitizers could be purchased at the same time. The products limited to two per customer are clearly marked on shelves,” the supermarket chain said.

Dax Foster, however, cautioned that while the supply in Cayman is steady at the moment, consumers may have to reconsider the use of “convenience products” and revert to old-school methods of sanitising, like soaking paper towels in bleach and water instead of using handy disinfecting wipes, and using Dettol, when pricing and supplies become an issue.

“We operate with a supply-and-demand challenge. I am sure that the retailers will be facing price inflation [because] the supply-and-demand model is so taxed right now. We are an [import] market; there is always other implications that would apply to us,” Foster warned.

He said he is certain retailers and manufacturers will soon start placing a moratorium on certain products.