Aldi, Lidl and Co.: Price wars with manufacturers are getting tougher - in the end it's the customers who pay
Created: 05/19/2022, 10:42 am
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
Retailers such as Aldi, Lidl and Co. are engaged in a fierce price war with the product manufacturers.
© Pa / dpa / archive image
Retailers such as Aldi, Lidl and Rewe are engaged in fierce price wars with product manufacturers.
Experts fear that consumers will end up looking in the dark.
Berlin – “Whoever does not fight back will soon no longer exist,” says Hans-Günter Trockels, entrepreneur at the cake master baking company, to
Der Spiegel
.
He is in a price war with the retail groups – i.e. supermarkets and discounters.
His problem: The purchase price for eggs and oils has doubled;
Flour and sugar have also become more expensive, he reports.
Trockels therefore wanted to push through 30 percent higher prices with the retail chains.
But they refused - and Trockels took action: He no longer delivers his products.
A high-ranking manager of a retail group, on the other hand, called Trockel's demands
"
unjustified".
You are “blackmailed” with delivery stops.
The suppliers would not have secured themselves against rising raw material and energy prices - the trade does not want to pay for this "bungling".
Aldi, Lidl, Rewe & Co.: Fierce price wars with manufacturers
Disputes between manufacturers of food or household products and retailers such as Aldi, Lidl, Edeka, Rewe and Co. are not new.
For years there has been a real war between the parties over prices - so far in favor of consumers, who have had cheap food and household products available in international comparison.
That's changing now - Aldi recently raised prices, other discounters and supermarkets have followed suit.
The manufacturers complain, however, that the retailers still insist on the lowest possible conditions.
"They fill their pockets," a producer's manager told the magazine.
It sounds different for retailers: retail giant Rewe, for example, announced that it would not pass on all supplier cost increases to customers and would therefore expect less profit.
"We have to distribute it in the system," said Rewe boss Lionel Souque at a press conference, according to the German Press Agency.
The food industry must first fight internally against price increases and then only pass on a part.
"It's clear that we'll have to give up some of our margins this year," Souque continued.
A three-digit million amount was already invested in the first quarter.
Nevertheless, the retail group Rewe does not want to pass on all the additional costs to the customers.
Experts: "Germans will have to spend more on food in the long term"
According to Spiegel
, Thomas Roeb, trade expert at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, observes
a “new quality” in the tug-of-war between retailers and manufacturers.
With negative effects for consumers: “In the long term, Germans will have to spend more on food.
Industry, supermarkets and discounters are pulling out all the stops to benefit from the current situation.”
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Chehab Wahby, consumer expert and partner of the EY-Parthenon consultancy,
also predicts further price increases in the
Handelsblatt .
"The discount is the impetus for prices in the market," he said.
Wahby assumes that the discounters will continue to raise prices - in the private label area and for branded articles: "The price movement will have a broad effect.
Because the supermarkets will then follow suit," he told the newspaper.
(lma/dpa)
