(CBC)

Weeks before the annual shipping season ends, a town on Labrador's northern coast is already running perilously low on food, including household staples, a leader says.

"There's no ketchup to buy, there's no mayonnaise, there's no salt beef," said Herb Jacque, the angajukKâk, or mayor, of Makkovik.

"At one point there was no sugar or milk to buy."

Jacque said food shortages sometimes happen in the winter, when ships cannot bring in fresh supplies.

However, freight and passenger boats are still servicing the north coast of Labrador, where communities rely on shipping in warmer months and flights in the winter.

Jacque said plenty of ordinary goods are missing from grocery shelves in Makkovik.

Carol Dyson, who manages one of the community's stores, said she has been waiting more than three weeks for a shipment to arrive from Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

She said customers are frustrated.

'Frustrating for everyone'

"They should be. I don't blame them at all. It's frustrating for everyone," Dyson told CBC News.

Dyson said some of the freight was sent from Happy Valley-Goose Bay to Lewisporte, on Newfoundland's northeast coast, before it was loaded on the freight boat and sent back up to Labrador.

Denis White, an official with Labrador Marine, which operates the passenger and freight service for the province, said it is unusual for freight shipments to take this long.

"I know at this time of the year, we do have some problems with weather, but typically we don't have [these] kind of delays," White said.

A freight shipment was expected to arrive in Makkovik on Thursday.