Has Bangkok Been Flooded Again?

[pipo1000]

I assume you all noticed already that big bottles of Coke Zero are missing from the shelves again for the past 3-4 weeks.None in Makro,Big C,Foodland or Tesco for at least 3 weeks in line,however Tesco still had stock when the others ran out already.

Now I get it you gonna reply that the product they use in Coke Zero is maybe short of supply,but then I notice that the last week also big bottles of regular coke are also very limited in supply in the major supermarkets.

Pepsico products as a whole are non excistent in the shops for the same 3-4 weeks.Not any Pepsico product available,being it bottlles big or small at the major supermarkets.

Even mineral water is still very limited in supply.I get it that the floods have done a lot of damage , being it with intend or not we will leave out of the question,but that was merely 6 months ago and the next flood season is peeping at the horizon.

Anyonme has a reasonable explanation for these current shortages.

[Farma]

Shortages seem to be random across the board and not just restricted to food items. Over the past few weeks our local makro was out of M150 and Singha water. Home hub, Home mart and Do Home were out of roofing materials and electrical switches I wanted.

Some of it can be put down to some transport services shutting down for nearly 2 weeks over the songkran period but I suspect factories are still trying to catch up on missed production caused by the floods.

[pipo1000]

2 weeks holiday for songkran is a bit too much of the good times,don't you think so,after all the festivities last 7 days while the official holidays only stand for 3 days.

Anyway the problems started weeks before Songkran.

[Heimdallr]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the demand for it has surged lately and the diminished production is not helping any.

[pipo1000]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the demand for it has surged lately and the diminished production is not helping any.

Where you got the news that the demand has surged for all coke products,especially coke zero,all pepsico products,roofing products,mineral waters,singha waters etc. etc.

[Heimdallr]

Perhaps not surprisingly, the demand for it has surged lately and the diminished production is not helping any.

Where you got the news that the demand has surged for all coke products,especially coke zero,all pepsico products,roofing products,mineral waters,singha waters etc. etc.

Not all, talking about Zero and alike.

[xthAi76s]

Shortages seem to be random across the board and not just restricted to food items. Over the past few weeks our local makro was out of M150 and Singha water. Home hub, Home mart and Do Home were out of roofing materials and electrical switches I wanted.

Some of it can be put down to some transport services shutting down for nearly 2 weeks over the songkran period but I suspect factories are still trying to catch up on missed production caused by the floods.

Despite how many people study transportation logistics and inventory management, I've never been to another country where they are so abysmally poor at handling stock. Things just randomly show up and disappear for weeks and months at a time. Even consistently popular items like Coke and Sprite and whether in small supermarkets or very large ones. They are terrible. Perhaps there is a good reason for the poor performance.

[lopburi3]

Only about 40% of those factories flooded have resumed full operation in report I read today (and for many full operation will mean shortages for a long time just catching up with missed delivery demands).

Believe there is a short self life for non sugar soft drinks and no stock so production is bought up/sold immediately and new cycle waits for paperwork?

As mentioned distribution ( here has always been murky at best (mom and pop can not afford excess stock where real sales to move same are unknown) and sale at xxx% markup is the goal.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Interesting.. I assume you are in Bangkok? I noticed the same for Coke Zero / Pepsi Max for Chiang Mai. Very strange that Tesco seems to have plenty stock, but not Big C or Makro. I wonder why that is?

Even worse, Big C ran out of Sang Som in the run up to Songkran.. now that's a potential disaster as a supermarket.

[lopburi3]

Not sure how widespread it is but have noted Latphao Tesco on Ekami/Ramintra has been using part of there parking area for temporary distribution center (huge tents housing stock) and expect others may be doing the same so likely they have taken delivery of full amount of there orders when available and other firms may have been limited due to storage capacity so quickly run out of stock as it is selling much faster than there storage can allow for restock.

[maiphedmaiaroi]

Dont drink Coke zero or any other product with aspartame in.

[HeavyDrinker]

As Lopburi3 says, the factories and distribution centres have yet to get back to full operations, add to that the overbuying for the Songkhran holiday.

Flooding...some rain would be more than welcome in BKK....

[Shurup]

I assume you all noticed already that big bottles of Coke Zero are missing from the shelves again...

I didn't and I won't miss it if all the Pepsi factories burn down to the ground!

[Shurup]

Dont drink Coke zero or any other product with aspartame in.

I would go even further and say don't drink ANY Coke... Nothing good in it...

If I want something sweet, I will drink some orange juice, if I want something sweet and carbonated, I would mix some soda with orange juice.

[xthAi76s]

Dont drink Coke zero or any other product with aspartame in.

I would go even further and say don't drink ANY Coke... Nothing good in it...

If I want something sweet, I will drink some orange juice, if I want something sweet and carbonated, I would mix some soda with orange juice.

Not sure about this one... Aspartame is likely the most scientifically studied modern food product in human history. The FDA and others in the US have about 40 years of research on it with no statistically significant caution for resulting problems.

As for orange juice, for people who are insulin insensitive (a large portion of the population), it is rather clear that consuming an aspartame product is far superior to consuming one containing high amounts of fructose or other insulin stimulating sugars (dextrose, sucrose, HFCS, etc). There is compelling argument that fructose is lends itself quite nicely to being stored as fat in the body.

For someone who is very sensitive to insulin (and the other hormones that regulate how energy are stored in and removed from fat cells), he or she should feel quite free to enjoy that glass of orange juice. He or she could also enjoy the aspartame containing product.

http://youtu.be/zpxm4kmcDww

EDIT:

ABSTRACT: Rates of fructose consumption continue to rise worldwide, and have been linked to rising rates of obesity, type-2 diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome. Elucidation of fructose metabolism in liver and fructose action in brain demonstrate three parallelisms with ethanol. First, hepatic fructose metabolism is similar to ethanol in that by accelerating the process of de novo lipogenesis, both promote hepatic insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and hepatic steatosis. Second, fructosylation of proteins with resultant superoxide formation can result in inflammation similar to acetaldehyde, an intermediary metabolite of ethanol. Lastly, by stimulating the "hedonic pathway" of the brain both directly and indirectly, fructose creates habituation, and possibly dependence; also paralleling ethanol. On a societal level, the treatment of fructose as a commodity on the open market exhibits similarities to ethanol. Fructose induces alterations in both hepatic metabolism and central nervous system energy signaling, leading to a "vicious cycle" of excessive consumption and disease consistent with metabolic syndrome. These dose-dependent actions of fructose on the liver and on the hedonic pathway of the brain recapitulate the effects of ethanol.

Released by The Ancestral Health Symposium http://ancestryfoundation.org/ under the Creative Commons license http://creativecommo...s/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Edited April 21, 2012 by xthAi76s

[Shurup]

Dont drink Coke zero or any other product with aspartame in.

I would go even further and say don't drink ANY Coke... Nothing good in it...

If I want something sweet, I will drink some orange juice, if I want something sweet and carbonated, I would mix some soda with orange juice.

Not sure about this one... Aspartame is likely the most scientifically studied modern food product in human history. The FDA and others in the US have about 40 years of research on it with no statistically significant caution for resulting problems.

As for orange juice, for people who are insulin insensitive (a large portion of the population), it is rather clear that consuming an aspartame product is far superior to consuming one containing high amounts of fructose or other insulin stimulating sugars (dextrose, sucrose, HFCS, etc). There is compelling argument that fructose is lends itself quite nicely to being stored as fat in the body.

For someone who is very sensitive to insulin (and the other hormones that regulate how energy are stored in and removed from fat cells), he or she should feel quite free to enjoy that glass of orange juice. He or she could also enjoy the aspartame containing product.

https://www.youtube....h?v=zpxm4kmcDww

Leaving the (pre) diabetic people alone, Coke can't compare to a orange juice or any other natural juices. They are different types of sugars and in moderate quantities juice provides many benefits for the body. Yes if one would consume gallons of it every day it will go into fat just as any other excess calories, the key word is moderation, too bad I can't say Coke is good in any amounts.

As for aspartame, there is a lot of very contradicting information on the net, I would let others find out on themselves which side in the argument is true.

[xthAi76s]

Not only prediabetic/diabetic people but anyone who has a metabolism that tends to store fat more efficiently than it burns fat. Fructose, especially when removed from its fiber, orange juice vs. oranges, even in small amounts can negatively impact a person's fatness. It does not need to be gallons. For me, a simple glass of orange juice raises my insulin to levels that are unhealthy. I am quite fit and young with no history of diabetes in my family.

But, yes, your point re natural vs completely synthetic is well taken, and I agree that generally speaking it's the way to go. But, people should know that not all things created in nature are good for all people.

[xthAi76s]

But, sorry, that was a tangent. Back onto the topic -- the distribution here has been bad for all the couple decades I've been here. There is also the problem of customers hoarding and then trying to resell for small profit. When the coke goes on sell even for only a couple baht, many customers will purchase entire carts full. I asked a lady who was doing this in Thai and she told me that she is not a food vendor but since they were on sale, she planned to resell them to food vendors at a slight profit.

Everyone here is an entrepreneur.

[glbv]

Idk where your located but foodland on thonglor8 has tons of both coke zero pepsi max and meneri water. I just bought 10 cases of water last night (6 1.5l cases), along with 6 bottles of pepsi max. They had tonsss

[draftvader]

I have noticed the comings and goings of Diet coke/Zero/Max since the floods. Unfortunately it was quite obvious what happened. They immediately hit the shelves with their biggest sellers (Coke, Nam Daeng, Sp-rite) and kept producing until they reached saturation to battle out for the lion's share of the post flood profiteering. Once they found themselves sitting with 1 or 2 day's production in their warehouses they switched the mixes onto less popular items until they realised that they had shifted the stock of the first run and they rushed back into producing those. Repeat ad nauseum.

I believe that they have, potentially, decided that market analysis and projected production figures are more expensive than pushing their minimum wage workers to produce large quantities that will still make them a profit due to low overheads. Increase the manpower and maintenance costs and they will start to apply knowledge to their supply chain in an effort to eek larger margins from their products whilst remaining competitive in the price war.

Until then it will take a long time until they have got their production levels sorted out and we see steady(ish) supply again. Just buy plenty of stock when you see it if it bothers you when it disappears.

[pipo1000]

Just opened my last bottle of Coke Zero.There will be held a memorial service later tonight.

[travelmann]

Shortages seem to be random across the board and not just restricted to food items. Over the past few weeks our local makro was out of M150 and Singha water. Home hub, Home mart and Do Home were out of roofing materials and electrical switches I wanted.

Some of it can be put down to some transport services shutting down for nearly 2 weeks over the songkran period but I suspect factories are still trying to catch up on missed production caused by the floods.

Despite how many people study transportation logistics and inventory management, I've never been to another country where they are so abysmally poor at handling stock. Things just randomly show up and disappear for weeks and months at a time. Even consistently popular items like Coke and Sprite and whether in small supermarkets or very large ones. They are terrible. Perhaps there is a good reason for the poor performance.

Im gonna generalise, Thais are lazy and have no thought process, go ahead an burn me down...........like i care, I know the truth, even when its in stock a bone idle assistant will just utter Mai mee.

Happens to me often, last time Global House wanted 3 upvc windows, wife was with me the man said mai mee yet he was virtually leaning on the things at the time he grunted it.

[kkerry]

My local Tesco still has Coke but the product I haven't seen anywhere since the floods is Nescafe Ice Coffee mix, http://www.veryasia.com/190143.html It seems to be made only in Thailand so no luck finding any in Singapore. Someone told me there is some ingredient in it that isn't being produced now because the factory was ruined in the flood. Just have to make my own now but it was the only 3-1 type coffee I bothered with.

[pipo1000]

Only about 40% of those factories flooded have resumed full operation in report I read today (and for many full operation will mean shortages for a long time just catching up with missed delivery demands).

Believe there is a short self life for non sugar soft drinks and no stock so production is bought up/sold immediately and new cycle waits for paperwork?

As mentioned distribution ( here has always been murky at best (mom and pop can not afford excess stock where real sales to move same are unknown) and sale at xxx% markup is the goal.

So what gonna happen in the unpredictable event that Bangkok floods again during the next rain season which is only a few months away.Then there will be no factories anymore, read : only empty shelves in the shops in Thailand?