Faced with double-digit food inflation, Bruno Le Maire slammed his fist down on the table Tuesday. “It is hard for me to understand that the upward impact is immediate and the downward impact takes longer. That seems to me unacceptable and disgusting for the consumer, ”he asserts.
And to call on all the big manufacturers to transfer the decreases observed in raw materials “before the summer” through new negotiations with the distribution. A guest this Wednesday on Good Morning Business, Dominique Schelcher, CEO of System U, is in the same vein and also calls for the reopening of trade negotiations.
“The first question from customers who understand that prices have gone up is ‘when will they go down?’
“No one wants to renegotiate except us”
Problem, the leader feels “extreme resistance from manufacturers who do not want to get involved in this.”
“But it is totally paradoxical, he continues. Last year, on March 1, Bruno Le Maire had asked to immediately reopen negotiations due to the rise in raw materials and we had done so with 4/5 increases accepted this year, materials (commodities, editor’s note) are falling and Nobody wants to renegotiate except us.”
And accuse certain industrialists of taking advantage of the situation: “I think that last year inflation was suffered by everyone. This year it is partly fed by certain players, I’m not saying all of them.”
Dominique Schelcher also refutes the argument of the renegotiation clauses of fixed-term contracts used by the industry to avoid reopening negotiations immediately. “It doesn’t work! Last year, these renegotiation clauses didn’t work. Very few providers play along with these clauses.”
And to add: “never like this year, they have answered me that” my problem is not the consumer, it is to pass the rise, the consumer does not matter to me “.
Cuts no earlier than the start of the school year.
The CEO believes that this position is more than risky: “Within a few months, these same industrialists will see us and our colleagues again, to say: ‘my sales have completely collapsed, what do we do? to boost them? sales?'”.
However, even with renegotiations, the price drop will not be immediate, “let’s be clear, even if we reopen negotiations now, it takes one to three months for the impact to be felt. And it won’t affect certain products. We want to be able to relaunch a move to the decrease at least in certain products because the next critical moment will be the start of the school year”.
Dominique Schelcher also believes that “inflation is sustainable. There is little hope that it will go down because some commodities are falling. Let’s not make the French dream, we will not return to pre-crisis prices.”
Source: BFM TV
