“We must force” the multinationals which supply everyday consumer products to supermarkets “to return to the negotiating table to lower prices”, because for the time being they “are killing people”, said Michel Biero, executive director on Monday. purchase from Lidl. “We are waiting for the big industrialists, the multinationals which produce” the “big brands that the French acclaim and consume every day (…) to come back to the negotiating table, as requested by the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, so that prices go down again”, he said on RTL.
Each year, supermarkets negotiate with their industrial suppliers the new conditions under which they will buy their products from them. Negotiations for 2023, completed on March 1, resulted in an average hike of around 10%. The government will bring together the heavyweights of the distribution sector in Paris on Thursday – a second meeting with the industrialists must take place at an undetermined date. He wants to push distributors and manufacturers to reopen trade negotiations, because the cost of certain raw materials has been falling for several months, without much impact on supermarket prices.
However, negotiations for purchases for the second half of the year have begun at Leclerc, said the president of the strategic committee of the E.Leclerc centers, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, at the end of April. “At Lidl, we have been dropping hundreds of articles for three weeks (…) but I took on my margin”, continued Michel Biero on RTL. “Of course, I sent a letter parallel to that of Bruno Le Maire to say to this great brand (of soda, editor’s note): “It would be nice to come back to discuss this price reduction that I put in the ray,’” he said.
But today “they are playing dead”, said Michel Biero, “There is one and only industrialist who, when I speak to you, came to see me spontaneously to tell me: “We are going to lower the price”, it is (the) major French manufacturer of Fleury Michon ham”. If we “will not find pre-crisis prices, prices must fall, because many indicators are green”, he continued, citing the costs of freight and energy, wheat and rapeseed prices.
