Diet Coke disappeared from shelves. For many factory workers across India, so did their work
About this episode
Diet Coke disappeared from Bangalore's shelves, and a teenager's frustrated Reddit post accidentally explained why: the Strait of Hormuz.
When the US-Israel war on Iran began in February, fuel shipments slowed. Aluminium furnaces went cold. PET resin prices jumped 75%. At least 25 plants shut completely. In one Odisha industrial belt alone, 700 of 1,500 workers lost their jobs.
But the war only made an existing problem worse — India had already tightened import rules on aluminium cans, leaving beverage companies dangerously dependent on West Asian buffer stock.
The shortage was always coming. The war just decided that it was now.
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