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| Liquor wholesalers wait in line to pick up boxes of HiteJinro soju at a factory in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, on June 7. Yonhap |
By Kim Jae-heun
Convenience store operators have decided to supply stores with only one box of HiteJinro soju per day as part of efforts to cope with the ongoing strike by the Cargo Truckers Solidarity, according to company officials Thursday.
About 25,000 unionized truck drivers began an indefinite strike on Tuesday amid soaring fuel prices, to demand the extension and expansion of the Safe Trucking Freight Rates System, which guarantees minimum cargo rates for trucks, as well as higher freight fares and additional labor rights. They are responsible for transporting HiteJinro's alcohol beverage products from its factory in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, to all over the country. The Cheongju factory produces 70 percent of HiteJinro's soju in Korea.
Ministop was the first to take the step of limiting its convenience stores from ordering more than one box of HiteJinro's soju products, such as Chamisul, Chamisul Original and Jinro, starting from June 4.
The next day, Emart24 and 7-Eleven decided to adopt the same policy as Ministop, followed by CU on June 8. They are even considering banning franchisees from ordering any bottled soju products by HiteJinro from their logistics centers in specific regions, as doing so would cause a national "liquor crisis."
"We have decided to limit our franchisees from ordering more than one box of HiteJinro's soju per day, after the truck drivers began their strike on Tuesday. There lies a chance that many of our franchisees will place as many orders for HiteJinro soju as possible to secure enough stock in advance," a CU official said.
Here, convenience store operators send their own vehicles to pick up HiteJinro's soju products and transport them to convenience stores.
GS25 and CU have already started picking up and delivering HiteJinro's alcohol beverages via their own vehicles from the Cheongju factory and a factory in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, another major soju production facility for the country's largest liquor maker.
"We have enough stock of HiteJinro soju for now, but we have to start preparing in case they run out. We don't know how long the walkout will last, so we have decided to transport our own orders for now," a GS25 official said.
The Cargo Truckers Solidarity's strike is also affecting Oriental Brewery's (OB) beer product deliveries across the country. About 180 truck drivers in the union are responsible for transporting Cass, OB's best-selling beer product, from factories in Cheongju, Icheon and Gwangju, and they are participating in the strike as well.
