Coles has slapped limits on the sale of frozen potato chips because of a nationwide supply shortage.

Customers will be temporarily limited to two items.

“This will help to maintain availability for all customers,” the supermarket said on Friday.

“Thank you for your patience, we apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Potato farmer Rod Guthrie, from Clarkes Hill in central Victoria, said wet summers had taken a massive toll.

“It all started back in January when we got the floods, it wiped a lot of potato crops out and the tonnage was heavily down for this year,” he told Melbourne’s 3AW radio on Friday.

“It’s been an extremely hard year, the tonnages were down and it’s been a cold and wet winter too, which doesn’t help.”

Mr Guthrie said potato farmers in Victoria, NSW and Queensland had yielded about half their usual crops.

He warned the shortages could affect cafes and restaurants, as well as supermarkets.

“The supply is not there, it’s not going to be on the shelves and at restaurants and I’d say by January there will be no supply around, hardly,” he said.

“The crops are down and we’re back to about half of the usual tonnage.”

Coles’ main rival Woolworths has not imposed any product limits.

But Woolworths Group boss Brad Banducci did flag a potential summer chip shortage earlier this year.

“The big issue right now … is in frozen vegetables,” he said a month ago.

“In particular, corn and potatoes, with the very poor growing season that we’ve had in Tasmania.

“That is causing some challenges in the frozen category and some risk of under supply in some stores.

“That has also flowed through … I don’t want to overplay anything at this stage, in potato crisps … [but] there are some supply issues on the way through there, so that’s the big one.”

-with AAP