A second quarter of 2023 under the sign of food price increases, according to Michel-Édouard Leclerc. The chairman of the strategic committee for E.Leclerc centres, the leader in food distribution in France ahead of Carrefour with more than 22% market share, was invited to react to the prospect put forward by certain specialists of a “red march” for prices on the shelves of supermarkets, once the annual negotiations between manufacturers and distribution have been completed on March 1.

The price increases will “be passed on until July because it takes four or five months” for them to come down on the shelves of supermarkets, explained Michel-Édouard Leclerc. “The new prices apply to new orders, when there is still stock available, it is at the old price. If prices don’t go up all of a sudden, “consumers will still see a lot of increases,” he said, as Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Monday he wouldn’t. there was “no reason for there to be a red mars”.

Michel-Édouard Leclerc denounced, like his colleagues in the mass distribution, the “enormous increases” demanded by their agro-industrial suppliers, giving as an example the rise in the price of sugar which, according to him, increased by 22% last year. previous year and for which a supplier requested “53.82% more than last year”.

Like every year, supermarkets and their agro-industry suppliers must agree on the prices and conditions of sale of pasta, steaks or other yogurts, which will then be marketed on the shelves. Traditionally tense, these negotiations are all the more so this year with the sharp inflation of many production costs, from packaging to agricultural raw materials, including energy.

Only one in two industrialists have signed all their contracts with their distributor customers, an unusually low rate one week before the close, the main agri-food industry organization told AFP on Wednesday. For Ania, “some distributors will wait until the last minute”. The organization also referred to “a lot of threats of delisting of products” by supermarkets if they do not obtain the desired prices.