The president of the strategic committee of the E.Leclerc centers Michel-Edouard Leclerc assured Tuesday that the commercial negotiations between manufacturers and distributors had “begun”. “We started” to renegotiate, he said on BFMTV. These negotiations relate to purchases “for the fall”.
“In the second half, we will break inflation”, in particular “with what we are negotiating”, promised the distributor. Michel-Edouard Leclerc estimated that the rise in prices “would continue until the summer, up to 20%” inflation. Negotiating with industrialists is “very complicated”, he judged. “In reality, we have a legal straitjacket which means that we cannot say to the manufacturer ‘We sit down on the contract’”.
At the beginning of April, the government had asked manufacturers and supermarkets to get back around the negotiating table to lower prices on the shelves “whenever this is objectively justified”. He had also invited them to “voluntarily enroll” in a “perspective of infra-annual renegotiation of contracts” determining the conditions of sale of the foodstuffs which ultimately line the supermarket shelves.
Each year, the supermarkets negotiate with their suppliers the conditions under which they will buy from them, for the coming year, their production which will fill the shelves of the stores.