“This product recorded a decrease in quantity or weight, but the effective price charged by the supplier increased.” This is the warning made by the French supermarket chain Carrefour along with 26 products that decreased in quantity and at the same time increased in price. The objective is to pressure the large multinationals in the food industry – such as Lipton, Lindt, Nestlé, PepsiCo or Unilever – to put an end to this practice.
“Evidently, the objective is to stigmatize these products. And be able to tell the manufacturers what you need rethink your pricing policy” said Stefen Bompais, communications director at Carrefour, quoted by Reuters, adding that the supermarket chain will only remove the warnings when prices drop.
Carrefour wants to change the pricing policy of large multinationals. Even after raw material costs have decreased, this had no impact on the cost of several products. In the near future, as Reuters writes, the supermarket chain will enter into negotiations with food companies and hopes that this strategy will help.
The executive director of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard, regrets that food companies do not collaborate to reduce prices, maintaining an inflationary policy. The French government has also met with multinationals and several supermarket chains to try to reduce the costs of various products, but so far without success.
The supermarket chain has put warnings, for example, on Lindt chocolates. In response to Reuters, the Swiss chocolate manufacturer confirms a price increase of around 9.3%, but recalled that it has made an “effort” to “compensate for the increase in costs.”
Source: Observadora
