Salt supplies for keeping roads ice free are running low following this winter’s big freeze, report various newspapers on Tuesday.

One company which supplies 65% of the salted grit used by road clearance vehicles told the Volkskrant it is now in short supply. He urged councils to take care with their stocks and prioritise which roads should be cleared.
‘A new shipment is on its way from Germany but it is just a tiny proportion of the amount needed, as long as the wintry weather continues,’ he told the paper. ‘Demand is exceeding supply many times over.’
On Tuesday morning, there were again long traffic jams because of the slippery conditions, with several accidents reported on the main roads.
Railway operator ProRail has extra maintenance crews on standby in case of heavy falls of snow. At the end of last year, most rail services were canceled because of problems caused by the snow and ice.
Garden centres
According to the Telegraaf, the country’s garden centres are running out of salt for domestic use and other snow-clearing equipment. ‘Zero, we have nothing left,’ a spokesman for garden centre De Bosrand in Rijsbergen, Noord Brabant told the paper.
Others have been waiting for new deliveries for several days now. ‘It’s a disaster. We should have had a delivery on Monday but we are still waiting,’ an assistant at a Praxis DIY centre in Amsterdam said.
But tool rental agencies Boels and Bo-rent both report a run on snow ploughs with a waiting list in some places.
Skates
The country’s two skate manufacturers Viking and Zandstra both report that stocks are running low. ‘The bottom of the warehouse is in sight,’ a Viking spokesman told the Volkskrant.
Despite warnings that the quality of the ice in many parts of the country is still very poor, the first outdoor tours are now being organised. Up to 1,000 people are expected to take part in the first official tour on Wednesday round the Henschotermeer lake east of Utrecht.
‘We’ll have 12 centimetres of ice tomorrow, the course has been swept and we are ready to go,’ Henk Boom of the local skating association in Woudenberg told the Telegraaf.
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