Nesquick at Shoprite.
News24/ William Brederode
- Nesquik is still available on South African store shelves – for now.
- There has been an increase in demand for the product since it was announced that it would be discontinued.
- An online Nesquik reseller listed the product for triple the market rate.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trendshomepage.
Nesquik is still on South African store shelves for now, but some sellers are charging exorbitant fees for the product now that it has been discontinued.
A Takealot marketplace seller has listed Nesquik products on the platform at around three times the price it is available for in most retailers.
Nestlé announced that it had discontinued its Nesquik flavoured milk drink owing to a drop in sales and lower demand for the product, the company said.
READ NOW | Nesquik to be discontinued in SA owing to 'lower demand'
The chocolate and strawberry 250-gram and 500-gram drinks were discontinued as of 21 August, the company announced.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the product was pulled from South African store shelves.
In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority detected a colourant in Strawberry Nesquick that was not permitted to be in foodstuffs that are normally consumed by children.
READ NOW |Nesquik banned over colourant
Nestlé was ordered to withdraw the strawberry flavoured Nesquick from the South African market, stopped production and destroyed hundreds of tonnes of strawberry Nesquick.
Strawberry Nesquick quickly came back to South African shelves following the incident, but now the product is set to go for good.
Demand increase
The news that Nesquik will no longer be with us has driven greater demand for the product in the days since the announcement.
The Shoprite group, which owns Checkers, said that “Checkers supermarkets saw a big uptake in the sale of Nesquik over the past weekend”.
News24 had a look at Checkers Sixty60 and saw that the 500-gram chocolate Nesquik powder was briefly listed as sold out.
Nesquick was briefly sold out on the Checkers Sixty60 application for a delivery in the Hyde Park area.
News24 visited Shoprite, Checkers, Pick n Pay, and Spar supermarkets in Johannesburg to see if the product was still available on the shelves.
Sure enough, all the stores had plenty of stock on their shelves:
Nesquick at Shoprite.
Nesquick at Pick n Pay.
Nesquick at Checkers.
Nesquick at Spar.
But News24 also found Nesquik listed on Takealot by a marketplace reseller that was nearly three times as expensive as the product was in store.
The 500-gram chocolate Nesquik was selling on Takealot for R173 and the strawberry flavour for R185.
Some of the other products listed by the marketplace reseller on Takealot are sold at competitive prices.
