Everything is getting more expensive. But it is hoped that supermarket giants will remain as critical of price increases as they were in January, writes chief news officer Saskia van Westhreenen.
At the beginning of this year the Fuze Tea went off the shelves at supermarket chain Jumbo. Albert Heijn also stood up for it. The chain has temporarily stopped supplying Nestlé (Maggi, Nescafe, KitKat). That group wanted to implement price increases of more than 20 percent, which, according to the large grutter, were ‘inadequately explained by cost increases’.
Meanwhile, new dark clouds are looming on the horizon. The messages about more expensive groceries tumble over each other. Hazelnut paste, bread, wood, oil, petrol, a person would hardly dare to leave the house. Where corona used to be the reason for price increases, it is now the war in Ukraine.
Supposedly: life is getting more expensive. Demonstrable, for example due to our more expensive energy bill, partly due to the fact that we are turning away from Russian gas and Russian oil. Raw materials, packaging material, transport, they all increase in price. Still, you have to be careful. Because in bad times there are always profiteers who try to make a profit from something.
A good example is the price of a jar of Nutella. The producer sounded the alarm because of disappointing hazelnut harvests in Turkey. The result: scarcity, pushing up prices and more expensive hazelnut spread. In January, the preliminary annual figures of large owner Ferrero were announced. With 988 million euros, it turned out to have achieved the highest net profit in ten years.
The bread sector issued a warning this week. Now that Europe’s granary is on fire, the price of a loaf of bread may double. This is a useful calculation. Business Insider recently explained it in great detail: for an industrial loaf of 1 euro, where flour accounts for 20 percent of the price, a 50 percent price increase of flour in theory leads to a 10 percent more expensive bread.
In the case of bakers, packaging, energy and transport also have a price-increasing role. But above all, we can hope that the supermarket giants will remain as critical of price increases in the coming period as they were in January. If only to prevent a crisis like this from being misused by a single large producer to fill the greenhouse. That would feel really unfair.
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