If you’ve tried to order freeze dried food storage recently, you’ve probably noticed that many suppliers are backed up in delivery and you may need to wait at least 6 weeks to get your order shipped. What is causing this shortage and will it get worse? Recently, Brian Neville wrote a letter to all Wise Company, Inc. customers. Wise Company, Inc. is one of the largest suppliers of US made freeze dried food storage and many prominent online stores, such as Preparewise.com and Wisefoodinsurance.com, carry their products.

Dear Valued Customer,

My name is Brian NeVille (President and CEO) with Wise Company, Inc. We are grateful for the opportunity to provide Wise product and services to each one of you individually. We pride ourselves on product quality and customer satisfaction.

Because of the recent occurrences (earth quakes, tsunamis, increase in food prices, inflation, demands on fuel, etc.) throughout the world, request for Wise product has increased dramatically.
This has put a sizeable stress, delay, and temporary shortage on all types of food products. Specifically, freeze dry, dehydrated, and dry raw-good commodities. We have chosen not to compromise our business by bringing in raw goods from outside of the United States. All Wise products will continue to be USA sourced and made.

Product requests and orders that in the past were shipped within 24 to 48 hours are now estimated at a shipping time of 6 to 8 weeks. We will continue to process orders in a first in and first out manner so it is important to keep the orders in the queue to ensure customers receive product as quickly as possible. Internal measures have and are being taken to address this temporary inconvenience and ensure success.

We will continue to send out status updates as needed. In the meantime, I am personally happy to address any additional questions or concerns you may have. We want to ensure your continued satisfaction. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this time.

Sincerely,
Brian NeVille
Wise Company Inc.

Another large provider of freeze dried is Oregon Freeze Dry AKA Mountain House. They supply sites like Emergency Essentials via Beprepared.com. Recently the sales manager for Oregon Freeze Dry sent out this e-mail:

This is an update on Oregon Freeze Dry’s #10 can situation. Because the demand for our #10 cans remains very high, we continue to be unable to meet all #10 can needs. OFD is allocating as much of our Production Capacity as possible to this market segment, while still allowing us to meet requirements in other markets.

Unfortunately, we cannot open sales to all previous dealers. We continue to sell allocated quantities to our long-time, largest customers/distributors.
We expect this situation to remain until at least this summer. At this point, we are not able to predict an actual date as to when we can open sales to all current dealers.

I wanted to share with you a recent company announcement to show that we are working on making improvements to be able to address these sudden increases in food storage demand. Our President, Jim Merryman, has signed off a multi-million dollar capital project to make some plant modifications that will increase our capacity. These modifications will start in May 2011 and we estimate the project to be complete by September 2011.

I know how difficult this situation is for each of you and your business. I truly feel your frustration and OFD is working incredibly hard to turn this situation around as quickly as possible.

Sincerely,
Oregon Freeze Dry, Inc.
Melanie Cornutt
Sales Manager, Retail

It looks as though the average American citizen is catching on and beginning to decide food storage is a good idea. Another popular explanation is that governments and wealthy groups are purchasing these products in bulk. Do some research on freeze dried storage shortage on Google and you will find some very interesting information. On top of that, there have been a myriad of natural disasters recently to spurn forward the idea of food storage.

Listed by date, here are a few of disasters that have happened so far in 2011: Major flooding in Brisbane, Australia, 6.3 magnitude earthquake in New Zealand, 8.9 massive earthquake in Japan and ensuing tsunami, major tornadoes in Southern United States. While it is impossible to foretell what the future holds, there is never a better time to prepare for the future than the present.