It was an update on CNN's Iran war live updates page.
If you’re shopping for your favorite Calbee chips in Japan and see that familiar bag in black and white – it’s not a printing mistake. The Japanese snack maker said on Tuesday it will temporarily change the packaging to grayscale and ditch its typically bright and eye-catching colors in stores nationwide because of supply chain disruptions from the Iran war.
The move comes in response to “supply instability affecting certain raw materials amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East,” the company said in a statement. The new packaging will apply to 14 products from May 25 and won’t affect product quality, Calbee said. The stripped-down packaging might mean shoppers need to rely more on the words on the packets, rather than the colors, when quickly grabbing their favorite flavors from supermarket shelves.
Usually, regular Calbee consumers would know that the red bag is for lightly salted potato chips, while the yellow packets with green labels are for seaweed flavor fans. The company didn’t specify exactly which shortages had prompted the change. But a spokesperson from the Japanese government said it had “received no reports of immediate supply issues regarding printing ink or naphtha, and we recognize that the necessary volume for Japan as a whole is being secured.”
Naphtha is a petroleum byproduct sometimes used in parts of the ink manufacturing process.
