During Australia’s first COVID-19 panic-buying wave in 2020, empty Coles shelves did not necessarily mean the country had run out of food. Coles chief operating officer Matt Swindells said the sudden jump in demand had disrupted a chain running from transport and warehouses back to factories and ingredient suppliers. Even after shoppers’ buying settled, those stages needed time to get back in sync.
Why could shelves be empty if Australia had enough food?
National food production and the stock available at one supermarket at one moment are different things. In March and April 2020, the immediate challenge was moving goods through distribution and into stores, not proof that Australia had exhausted its food supply.
ABC News quoted Geoffrey Annison, then acting chief executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, saying Australia produced enough food annually to feed 75 million people—three times the population. That was Annison’s attributed statement in 2020, not a current measurement of food security. ABC News reported his explanation alongside the practical problem of restocking.
How did panic buying ripple through the supply chain?
Swindells described a chain with several linked stages: transport, the retailer’s warehouse, suppliers’ warehouses, factories, and providers of raw materials and ingredients. A store could run out of its usual stock while a distribution centre or manufacturer was also waiting for replenishment. Manufacturers, in turn, might depend on ingredients with their own lead times.
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Coles’ normal demand estimates had been thrown off by the abrupt buying surge. A sudden change in what customers buy is not instantly translated into more finished goods: each stage has to respond, and the stages must line up again. Swindells told PerthNow that a surge seven weeks earlier had to “ripple its way back up the supply chain,” adding, “That all has to come back into sync.” The PerthNow interview also pointed to the long distances involved in Australian freight. ABC’s account said recovery could take weeks.
Why did different products recover at different speeds?
There was no single restocking timetable for every item. PerthNow named toilet paper, flour and hand sanitiser among the goods sought by shoppers; ABC also discussed pasta, rice and pasta sauce. The reporting does not establish a comparable item-by-item recovery timeline.
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Toilet paper: output and delivery could be adjusted
Swindells said manufacturers increased output of high-demand goods and, in some cases, changed transport arrangements to send toilet paper directly to stores. Coles could also move product into stores on the pallet as it arrived, rather than relying on every usual handling step. These adjustments could ease a distribution bottleneck, but they did not make all products interchangeable or guarantee immediate availability at every shop.
Eggs: production could not simply be switched on
Swindells contrasted toilet paper with eggs, whose production cannot be accelerated on demand in the same way. Biological production and ingredient constraints limit how quickly supply can respond, even when a retailer wants to replenish shelves faster.
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What else affected what shoppers saw?
Distribution capacity mattered between the warehouse and the supermarket. ABC quoted Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman saying the challenge was getting stock from distribution centres into stores; he also cited local delivery restrictions. That was his explanation of a factor in the disruption, not a universal account of every empty shelf.
Demand also reflected more than stockpiling. Coles said social-distancing measures increased at-home meal and household consumption, adding pressure as customers changed where and how much they consumed.
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What did Coles do to improve replenishment?
In its 29 April 2020 update, Coles said stockpiling had begun affecting supermarket sales in late February and continued through March. It said it started per-customer limits in certain categories in early March. To improve replenishment, the company reported opening three temporary distribution centres—in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland—hiring 12,000 additional team members, and working with suppliers and supply-chain partners.
Coles also cited more than 30 million incremental supermarket trips in March, based on Nielsen Homescan data for the four weeks to 22 March 2020. The figure was reported by the company as part of its account of the disruption; it is a historical measure, not a current shopping statistic. Coles Group’s 29 April update describes its response and the basis for the trips figure.
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What the 2020 explanation does—and does not—tell us
The accounts from ABC, PerthNow and Coles explain a particular emergency in 2020: exceptional demand, disrupted forecasts, production lead times and distribution constraints interacting across a supply chain. The ACCC’s 2022 application record also describes pandemic-related strain involving panic buying, staff shortages and logistics, and sought authorisation for targeted coordination through 31 December 2023. It is historical context, not evidence that the same conditions or coordination continue today. The ACCC record concerns that application.
These sources do not establish why shelves may be empty in 2026. For the 2020 episode, the central distinction is that a bare shelf showed a local availability problem; it did not, by itself, show that Australia had run out of food.
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