Trinidad and To­ba­go we have a prob­lem.

Roy­al Cas­tle has run out of its fa­mous pep­per sauce.

And the prob­lem may con­tin­ue un­til the end of Oc­to­ber.

This was re­vealed by Roy­al Cas­tle Ltd's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Sandy Roopc­hand dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia to­day.

Roopc­hand said Roy­al Cas­tle has not been get­ting the quan­ti­ty of pep­pers it re­quires to be able to make its icon­ic pep­per sauce.

But the prob­lem is not on­ly lim­it­ed to Roy­al Cas­tle, Roopc­hand said.

Oth­er pep­per sauce pro­duc­ers are al­so not get­ting pep­pers she said.

"It is a huge prob­lem in the coun­try right now. We are try­ing our best to get pep­pers and reach­ing out to farm­ers. It is dif­fi­cult at this point in time," she said.

Roopc­hand said the clo­sures of restau­rants as a re­sult of COVID lock­downs as well as re­cent flood­ing have both ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lem.

"It is re­al­ly bad. I think the flood­ing caused a lot of it. Al­so when the restau­rants were locked down a lot of the farm­ers did not plant be­cause when they plant­ed for the first lock down no body bought be­cause the restau­rants were still closed," Roopc­hand said.

"Dur­ing the sec­ond lock­down they did not plant," she said.

Roopc­hand said pep­pers take about three months to grow.

The lim­it­ed quan­ti­ty of pep­pers Roy­al Cas­tle has been get­ting so far is be­ing used for mari­nade in­stead of the mak­ing of pep­per sauce, Roopc­hand said.

"It is not just Roy­al Cas­tle it is all over but be­cause we make our own pep­per sauce and sell in the stores, we don't buy, peo­ple know it is an is­sue. But it is a prob­lem," Roopc­hand said.

"Our farm­ers have guar­an­teed that by the end of Oc­to­ber, the first week in No­vem­ber I should be able to get a reg­u­lar sup­ply," she said.

Roopc­hand said it is not that Roy­al Cas­tle does not want to buy pep­pers they are just not get­ting the sup­ply re­quired.

"Right now we are ac­tu­al­ly stand­ing up in the mar­ket try­ing to get our sup­ply," Roopc­hand said.

"If there are farm­ers out there who want to sup­ply us then by all means you can come and of­fer us your goods," she said.

Roopc­hand of­fered an apol­o­gy to all of Roy­al Cas­tle's cus­tomers.

"We are apol­o­gis­ing to the cus­tomers and as soon as we start get­ting a sup­ply we will start pro­duc­ing more pep­per," she said.