How much will the shopping cart cost in March, May or July? Despite the announcements on the establishment of “anti-inflation baskets” and the call launched by Emmanuel Macron to supermarkets to “participate in the effort”, the addition to the cash register is likely to soar. In question, the heated discussions between the stores and their suppliers of the agro-industry, all in an inflationary context.
The price of a majority of products sold in large food stores, from the leader E.Leclerc to Casino via Carrefour, depends on the purchasing conditions negotiated until midnight Wednesday by these brands with their industrial suppliers. They are free of the price of the foodstuffs they sell to the consumer, provided they respect a minimum margin of 10% provided for by law. But they must negotiate each year with the agro-industry the price and the conditions of sale, in yogurt, meat or biscuits.
About “10% food inflation” expected
The problem is that the operating costs of stores are soaring, in particular electricity bills, and that manufacturers, too, are facing inflation in their production costs. At the Agricultural Show on Saturday, Emmanuel Macron called on distributors to “participate in the effort”. “We cannot ask for an effort” from farmers, given the increase in energy and “various inputs”, he estimated, and agro-industrialists, “many SMEs all over the territory”, ” have made a considerable effort in recent years. For their part, supermarkets are crying out about the lack of transparency and exaggerated demands for increases.
But whatever the outcome of the negotiations, the prices on the shelves will still increase. Already, because the supermarkets undertook in December, in a legally non-binding document, to “take into account, without negotiating them, the cost increases suffered” by their suppliers, especially the smallest ones. Then, because the requests for increases are “anything but delusional”, according to Jean-Philippe André, president of the agri-food lobby Ania, in response to the boss of Carrefour Alexandre Bompard. “Raw materials are more expensive than last year, and we have purchased energy at current rates for the whole year. »
And more than a “red month of March”, there “will still be food inflation (…) of around 10% throughout the first half of 2023”, predicted the president of Système U Dominique Schelcher this Monday on France inter. Proof of these tensions, only one in two manufacturers had signed all their contracts with their distributor customers in the middle of last week, an unusually low rate a few days before the close.