Bavaria’s food craftsmen and breweries are warning of an impending wave of price increases. Bakers, brewers, confectioners, butchers and millers declared on Thursday in Munich that the rapid rise in energy prices and transport costs would have a “high impact” on sales prices in the coming year. “All major cost factors as well as raw materials and transport costs are increasing massively,” said Stefan Stang, General Manager of the Association of Private Breweries Bavaria. “We will not be able to avoid passing these price increases onto our products.”
In a fire letter to Minister for Economic Affairs Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters), so called by the associations themselves, the five associations are calling for government steps to defuse the constant inflation. In addition to the private breweries, these are the state guilds of butchers, bakers and confectioners as well as the Bavarian Millers Association. Numerous companies would be driven into great hardship by the additional burdens and were virtually overwhelmed by the cost increases, according to the announcement of the five associations. “Minister of State Aiwanger and other ministers at federal and state level must seek and find ways out of the energy price crisis as quickly as possible. It is no longer five to twelve, but five past twelve,” said the managing directors.
As a solution, they proposed a temporary waiver by the state of the levies and taxes that make energy more expensive. Apart from that, food artisans and brewers pleaded for the production of renewable electricity to be expanded more quickly. “Conventional energies such as oil and gas are the price drivers, not renewable energies,” emphasized Josef Rampl, Managing Director of the Bavarian Müller Association.