Negotiations between agro-industrialists and distributors are still not completed but the discord is already public. The president of the Les Mousquetaires Intermarché group, Didier Duhaupand, accused Danone on Thursday of taking advantage of inflation to improve its margins with “unreasonable” price increases.
“There has been a change of direction at the head of Danone and their shareholders are asking them for higher profitability, this is reflected in price increases”, estimated on BFM Business Didier Duhaupand, questioned on the absence, in a number of Intermarché stores, bottles of Evian, Badoit or Volvic, all brands of the Danone group.
Behind-the-scenes tensions
The government decided in March to reopen negotiations between manufacturers and large retailers, during which the purchase prices of a large part of the products then sold in supermarkets are decided. The objective was to take into account the inflation of both agricultural raw materials and production, transport or packaging costs in the purchase prices of products by supermarkets.
But since March, the former have accused the latter of refusing to pay more for foodstuffs that cost more to produce or of raising prices on the shelves even though they refused to pay more for these products. The distributors, for their part, consider certain price increases to be unjustified, or different from one manufacturer to another.
Danone “takes advantage of the crisis”
“We are also producers, with water sources”, explained Didier Duhaupand, the Mousquetaires group having the particularity of having an agri-food branch, Agromousquetaires. “We know the cost breakdown”, which “makes us say that the demands of around 12% [de hausses de tarif] are not reasonable” in relation to the market.
He felt that Danone, “like a number of companies, is taking advantage of the current crisis to restore their margins”. For his part Danone, if he told AFP “not to be in a position to comment” on this increase “linked to business secrecy”, said to have “reached agreements with most of our other customers”, agreements “which take into account [ses] economic imperatives.
The end of the month as a goal
Jean-Philippe André, president of the National Association of Food Industries (Ania), said Thursday that for the time being “45% of our members have not completed all of their negotiations with all of their customers. “.
He asked the government “to encourage the players to complete these negotiations by the end of the month”, before a new phase for the 2023 tariffs begins in October, which must be completed the following March. . “A stack of negotiations would be really detrimental to everyone,” he said.