A drop in food prices is difficult to foresee before March 2024 at the earliest and the end of the next negotiations with manufacturers if the government does not push them to renegotiate by then, distributors pleaded on Wednesday during a meeting in Bercy.
We asked to be able to renegotiate really and as quickly as possible to pass on the shelves of the supermarkets the lowering of the production costs of many foodstuffs, explained to AFP the general delegate of the employers’ federation of large distribution (FCD), Jacques Creyssel. , at the end of this meeting with the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the Minister Delegate in particular for Trade Olivia Grgoire.
The government will receive manufacturers who supply supermarkets on Thursday.
The challenge is to ensure that the major manufacturers, especially foreign ones, are willing to start the renegotiations so as not to wait for next March, Jacques Creyssel insisted again. This can go through the law or through an agreement with a commitment on the part of manufacturers, as our sector did last year when production costs were on the rise this time.
Otherwise, we hope for March a drop in food prices in stores, had previously declared on RTL the boss of the Intermarch group Thierry Cotillard.
The big meeting is next March, in the meantime we take our responsibilities, abounded on Radio Classique the president of System U, Dominique Schelcher, stressing that between now and then on the big brands, nothing will change.
The difficulty of this subject is that we negotiate once a year for prices that apply to the rest of the year, underlined Dominique Schelcher, denouncing a system that locks us in and behind which manufacturers (… ) take refuge.
Each year, the supermarkets and their agro-industrial suppliers negotiate from December until March 1 the conditions of sale for a large part of the products sold throughout the rest of the year in supermarkets.
During the last episode, which ended in March, the average price paid by supermarkets to manufacturers rose by 9%. But the price of a number of raw materials has since fallen and the government has called on the various parties to get back to the negotiating table.
But out of 75 multinationals, only a dozen had responded to Bruno Le Maire’s call to lower prices, said Wednesday in a message to AFP the executive director of purchasing and marketing of Lidl France Michel Biero. He felt that the meeting with Bercy was very positive and heralded concrete measures.
The CEO of Carrefour Alexandre Bompard, also new president of the FCD, also explained on Tuesday that he was asking for a moratorium on the application of the Descrozaille law, which governs the promotions of care and hygiene products and is due to come into force in March 2024. , and castigated by the distribution as an inflationary law at a time when we are asking for price cuts, Jacques Creyssel underlined again on Wednesday