Kolkata: Butter has begun disappearing from grocery shelves across Kolkata, with retailers reporting erratic supplies just as demand picks up ahead of the festive season.The shortage is particularly visible in the case of Amul and Britannia, the dominant packaged butter brands (with Amul having more than 95% market share in Kolkata), though availability varies sharply between pack sizes and outlets. Several retailers have been receiving only a fraction of their usual requirement, while others have gone days without replenishment. Institutional users, including bakeries and confectioners, are feeling the squeeze more because they depend on 500g and bulk packs.The disruption is also visible online. Kolkata wholesale platforms recently listed 500g unsalted butter as out of stock, indicating that the shortage has extended beyond neighbourhood grocery stores to supplies meant for restaurants and bakeries. Availability on quick-commerce platforms has also been patchy, with some butter variants and pack sizes showing as unavailable even when others remained in stock.“For the past two days, I had been desperately searching for butter. I checked several neighbourhood shops and even tried online, but it was unavailable everywhere. I finally managed to get a pack from a department store quite far from my home,” said Sunita Agarwal, a resident of Chetla.“Supplies have become extremely irregular. Earlier, fresh stocks would arrive routinely, but for the past few days replenishment has been very poor. Customers are coming in repeatedly asking mainly for the 100g and 500g packs, but in many cases we simply have nothing to offer them,” said Srikanta Khatua, a retailer at Behala Old Market.The precise reason for the Bengal shortage has not yet been officially spelt out by Amul. However, a similar shortage has surfaced in other parts of the country this year. During a butter crunch in Pune in July, an Amul distributor said supply had been affected by inadequate availability of milk with the required fat content and described it as a seasonal problem. Bakeries there reported exhausting their regular stocks and being forced to experiment with alternative brands.That points to a wider supply-side squeeze rather than a manufacturing problem restricted to Bengal. Butter is especially vulnerable when milk-fat availability falls because its production requires substantially more milk fat than products such as toned milk.For Kolkata’s bakeries, the shortage comes at an inconvenient time, with production of cakes, biscuits, pastries and other confectionery traditionally rising ahead of the festive season.“Our bakery normally requires around 10kg of butter a week, but at present we are getting barely one kg a week. Supplies have become so erratic that we have had to try different brands and, in some cases, pay more just to keep production going. Butter is an essential ingredient for several of our products, so a prolonged shortage will eventually push up our production costs,” said Arif Mohammed, a bakery operator in Taltala.Retailers now hope the disruption will remain temporary. But with Durga Puja and the festive baking season approaching, even a short supply squeeze could become more visible as household, restaurant and bakery demand rises simultaneously.
