Supermarkets in Australia and New Zealand are running out of soft drinks and soda water due to a "short term C02 supply shortage," according to gas supplier BOC.
"This is due to supply interruptions from several local CO2 sources and issues impacting international freight for imported CO2 product," gas supplier BOC told ABC News.
According to the Australia New Zealand Industrial Gas Association, the shortage is caused by upstream shortages related to inflation, environmental compliance, and geopolitics. Meanwhile, new CO2 applications are emerging around more sustainable fuels and green concrete which depend on the gas for production.
"Does that mean another CO2 crisis is coming? It's potentially going to happen," Rob Cockerill, content director at trade publication Gasworld, at a recent industry summit.
From Gasworld:
During the Summit, Christopher Carson, Managing Director at BioCarbonics and Founding Director of Carbonic Solutions BV, talked about the changing nature of the CO2 supply chain…
He said, "There are a lot of dynamics that are changing around CO2, both from the supply and demand side. For the supply chain, the challenges are competition for sources. You've got a lot of traditional sources supplying emerging markets, that are moving out of Western Europe and North America to lower-cost energy environments, and then there is carbon capture and sequestration which is also competing for those sources."