Not before, at least, March 2024. Distributors issued the alert on Wednesday during a meeting in Bercy about food prices, which should not fall for seven months and the end of the next negotiations with manufacturers. Supermarkets are calling on the government to push manufacturers into renegotiation.
“We asked to be able to renegotiate really and as quickly as possible” to pass on the shelves of supermarkets the drop in 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 Grégoire.
The government will receive manufacturers who supply supermarkets on Thursday. “The challenge is to ensure that the major industrialists, especially foreign ones, are willing to start the renegotiations so as not to wait for next March”, Jacques Creyssel hammered again. “This can be done by law or by an agreement with a commitment from manufacturers, as our sector did last year” when production costs were this time on the rise.
Without this, “we hope for March” a drop in food prices in stores, had previously declared on RTL the boss of the Intermarché 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 until then “on the big brands, nothing will move”.
“The difficulty of this subject is that we negotiate once a year for prices that apply throughout the rest of the year”, underlined Dominique Schelcher denouncing a “system which […] locks [the distributors] and behind which manufacturers […] take refuge”.
Each year, 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 concluded last March, the average price paid by supermarkets to manufacturers increased 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 around 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 had asked for “a moratorium” on the application of the Descrozaille law, which governs the promotions of care and hygiene products and which must enter in force in March 2024. The distribution castigates this inflationary law “at a time when we are asking for price reductions”, Jacques Creyssel further underlined on Wednesday.