Meath shoppers rush to buy freezers amid coronavirus fears

A Navan based electrical store has said that it was seeing up to six times the usual level of freezer sales for the time of year amid reports that the frozen food aisles in some supermarkets had been stripped bare by anxious shoppers in wake of the Coronavirus outbreak.

John Donohoe of Donohoe Electrical in Navan said that after returning from stepping out of the shop for a couple of hours on Saturday he was 'shocked' to discover that the entire stock of freezers in the store had been sold. 

"I was out on Saturday for a while and when I came back later in the day our entire stock of fridge freezers were sold out. Everything we had in stock was gone.  We have never seen anything like it. It definitely caught us by surprise," he said. 

"We have stock coming in but most of it is sold before it arrives. Everything that is coming in is not even coming out of the box. It's going out the door nearly as soon as it arrives," he added. 

The Navan businessman commented that freezers were not usually in big demand in March – peak demand is usually before Christmas but said both full and chest freezers were proving particularly popular.

Shoppers are rushing to buy freezers to stockpile food

"I read a UK article last week that said that freezer sales went up 200%, that's very conservative, I'd say it's more like 500 - 600%. It's not something that sells in big volume this time of year, it's usually November or December time. 

"It seems people are just looking to stockpile food. 

"I spent a lot of yesterday and today talking to suppliers and getting stock so we were lucky enough that we did manage to secure some deliveries because we realised very quickly what was going on.

"But there is going to be shortages because this isn't just a demand in Ireland, it's everywhere. 

"We have prebooked stock into the end of this month as much as we can get. There is a huge supply chain here, the biggest producer of white goods in Europe is Italy and the biggest producer of the electronic components that go into them is China so there is going to be stock issues. 

"What we are doing in Donohoe Electrical is Navan is positioning ourselves to make sure that we have a constant supply of stock."