Amid all the suffering due to inflation and supply chain issues, tampon supply has been hit hard adding to the woes of the women in the menstruating age group in the United States. The war in Ukraine has further crimped supply because Russia and Ukraine are both major exporters of fertilizer, which is used to grow cotton
Women are complaining on social media about missing tampons on the shelves of the supermarkets. The issue garnered national interest this week after an article in TIME magazine called the dearth of tampons and pads the shortage “no one is talking about.”
Procter & Gamble told Bloomberg that the company was “working hard to ramp up production to meet the increased demand for our products.” The company owns a number of the biggest sanitary product brands in the US, including Tampax and Always.
A spokesperson for Edgewell Personal Care, which makes Playtex and o.b. tampons, said that its stocks have been “impacted due to extensive workforce shortages caused by two separate Omicron surges in the US and Canada in late 2021 and early 2022, respectively”.
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Tampon prices are up significantly — nearly 10% from a year ago, according to Bloomberg. But an Amazon spokesperson denied rumours of price gouging, saying its policies “help ensure sellers are pricing their products competitively,” and that the company actively monitors pricing and removes offers that violate its fair pricing policy.
On Monday, the US Senator for New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan, wrote to the CEO of Procter & Gamble, urging the manufacturer to tackle the shortages, which she labelled “very troubling.”
Hassan cited a story in Time Magazine, in which a reporter was unable to find tampons across several states, and criticized the “price gouging” of items.
(with inputs from agencies)
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