An announcement that was expected by many consumers. “I confirm to you that there will be price reductions for consumers,” said the boss of the Mousquetaires/Intermarché, in an interview published on Saturday by West France.
These reductions will mainly concern products (butter and pasta, in particular) from distributor brands, popular with households in times of inflation, but also on products manufactured by SMEs, with whom negotiations scheduled until January 15 are taking place. pretty good,” according to Thierry Cotillard, who lists pasta, biscuits and hygiene products.
With the agro-industry multinationals, “we are looking for deflation” but the negotiations which will end on January 31 are “very difficult”, he added.
“We might get angry”
Like his competitors, the boss of Intermarché denounces the price increases requested by agro-industrialists, citing Essity (Lotus) or Mondelez (Lu and Oréo), while the price of certain raw materials has fallen. “We could get angry,” he says, a few days after the thunderous delisting of PepsiCo products by its competitor Carrefour.
“We could rationalize the assortments (…) If a national brand has 100 products, if it is not reasonable, perhaps 60 products will be enough,” suggests Thierry Cotillard, adding that it is difficult for him to remove from his shelves brands like Coca-Cola given the volumes sold.
It also intends to continue its humorous poster campaigns to draw consumers’ attention to brands that engage in “shrinkflation” by reducing the volumes in packages without lowering the price, or even increasing it.
The other issue which is occupying French mass distribution is the purchase by Intermarché and Auchan of several hundred Casino stores, the Saint-Etienne distributor facing serious financial difficulties involving a drastic restructuring of its debt.
The boss of Intermarché, who notably wants to take over two thirds of the 313 large-size stores concerned in this “plate tectonics”, wants to be reassuring for the unions: “When we take over a brand, we take the employees on board”, a promise already made to of Bercy at the end of December for the preservation of jobs.
“We will have to wait until the end of January” for the negotiations to conclude, he adds, affirming that the group, third behind E. Leclerc and Carrefour, will then be at “eighteen points of market share”, with key for consumers are price reductions of “around 15%” in the acquired stores. Counterpart, the suspension of “international development until the end of 2024” for Intermarché.