And if you thought shipping-related shortages would be limited to imported goods, you'd be wrong.
Tonight we can tell you that not even your 5-gallon water is safe from scarcity. That's because of its container. The plastic vessels aren't manufactured in Belize but rather brought in on those very same containers.
And this evening Bowen and Bowen's corporate relations manager Rosanna Villanueva gave us some more detail on the perfect storm for those plastic bottles and how it might be affecting your 8 glasses a day.
Rosanna Villanueva, Corporate Relations Mgr., Bowen & Bowen
"What we are facing really is global supply chain disruptions that are unfortunately affecting our supply of 5 gallon containers and it's a combination of situations, we have factories where due to lockdown measures imposed because of the covid19 pandemic that production has slowed down so things are just being manufactured at a slower pace. We also have an issue where our supplier is having problems getting the raw materials to make the bottles for us, so while we had an order pending for a few weeks now, unfortunately they haven't been able to give us a definitive date as to when we will get the bottles in country, so we are exploring other options, we are looking for other suppliers to see how we can fill the gap, but yes that is what we are facing right now in the country."
"Our suppliers have given us a tentative timeline of 2 weeks for us to get the bottles so we are working with that timeline right now and as I said we are also seeing what we can do in the interim to alleviate the situation."
Reporter
"Is it the customer belief that company somewhere may be hoarding bottles, could there be some incentive to get them to release those bottles?"
Rosanna Villanueva
"An issue right now is the hot weather, whenever it gets very hot like this people tend to drink more water, so naturally the demand for water goes up. So I think that may exacerbating the situation as well. So yes, if you have bottles in good condition that you are not using and you want to turn them into our sales centers, of course we welcome that. We also looking at other options to address it in the short term maybe reallocating our supplies and things like that, so all angles are being looked at right now to try and alleviate the situation."
Reporter
"Can we expect that the price of 5 gallon water will go up?"
Rosanna Villanueva
"We don't have any reason to believe that at this time, so for right now everything remains the same."
Channel 7