“Prices will not fall” for food products, warn manufacturers

2023-11-29 00:56:40

The prices of food products “are not going to fall” on the shelves next year, declared Tuesday the president of the agri-food lobby Ania, Jean-Philippe André. The costs of the companies that make them have generally not declined, he explained.

“Fortunately we have entered a phase of disinflation: prices will not fall but inflation will slow down,” he declared in front of journalists.

Costs “continue to rise”

Exceptionally in 2024, annual commercial negotiations between supermarket brands and their suppliers will conclude early – by January 31 at the latest (rather than March 1).

The government introduced this measure, recently adopted by Parliament, in the hope that price reductions for certain ingredients (cereals, oils, poultry, etc.) would result as quickly as possible in a reduction in shelf prices. The cost of food has in fact increased for the French by 21% between January 2021 and October 2023.

However, most agri-food companies will start negotiations with increasing prices because their costs (agricultural raw materials, packaging, transport, salaries, energy, etc.) “continue to increase”, even if “slower than the last year, very fortunately,” indicated Jean-Philippe André.

Negotiations “perhaps not at the level of expectations”

“The result (of the negotiations) will perhaps not be at the level of expectations” of political leaders and distributors, noted for his part Miloud Benaouda, president of Barilla (pasta, sauces) for Western Europe, at the head of the industry-commerce commission at Ania.

Certainly, he illustrated, there is a “relaxation” on the price of durum wheat which is used to make pasta, but still “strong tensions” on tomatoes and sugar which are used in the composition of sauces, while “the energy remains very high”.

“We are afraid” of the negotiations which are opening “because we know that it will be violent”, confided the boss of a company requesting anonymity. “Buyers (from distribution) have a lot of files to deal with” in a short period of time and “are going to have to be sharper”. According to him, one of them began the bargaining by asking for “-30%” compared to what had been negotiated a year earlier.