"
It's not March that will be red but the second quarter
" 2023 in view of the prices requested by agro-industrial suppliers in the context of negotiations with supermarkets, estimated Thursday on BFM / RMC Michel-Edouard Leclerc.
Read also“Anti-inflation basket”: faced with difficulties, the executive ready to hand over to distributors
The chairman of the strategic committee for E.Leclerc centres, the leader in food distribution in France ahead of Carrefour with a market share of more than 22%, 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-Edouard Leclerc.
“
The new prices apply to new orders, when there is still stock available, it is at the old price
”.
If prices are not going to rise suddenly, "
consumers will still see a lot of increases
", he specified, while the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire said on Monday that there had "
no reason for there to be a red march
".
Michel-Edouard 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% the 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.
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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 mentioned “
many threats of delisting of products
” by supermarkets if they do not obtain the desired prices.
