In several European countries, price negotiations are escalating: in France, Jacobs Douwe Egberts has stopped deliveries to Intermarche, in the United Kingdom, The Colgate Palmolive range has disappeared from the shelves at Tesco.
It is again upper hand between a lot of supermarket chains and large brand manufacturers: at Colruyt, the folds with Ferrero and Nestle seem to have been smoothed out, but internationally a lot of new conflicts are coming to the surface.
The Dutch web supermarket Picnic, for example, recently removed Lay’s potato chips from the range after disagreements about price increases. “We fight for the lowest price. Unfortunately, we cannot agree with this supplier,” the retailer reports in its app. Picnic buys together with the German market leader Edeka, who is currently cracking down on major suppliers such as PepsiCo, L’oreal or Melitta.
In France, an open conflict is raging between supermarket chain Intermarche and coffee producer Jacobs Douwe Egberts: the latter has stopped deliveries after a refusal by the retailer to accept price increases. To the Capital business magazine, the manufacturer declares “to give priority to the dialogue with Intermarche and to make every effort to reach a reasonable agreement as soon as possible.”According to Intermarche, JDE would like to push through a 25% tariff increase – which the company denies. A judge has meanwhile forced the coffee roaster to resume deliveries.
In the United Kingdom, too, things are rumbling: at market leader Tesco, according to the trade magazine The Grocer, almost the entire range – more than seventy references – of Colgate Palmolive has now disappeared from the shelves and the webshop. On social media, the retailer answers evasively to questions from dissatisfied customers. A Tesco spokesperson told The Grocer that the retailer hoped to have “a full range of Colgate products available to customers again soon”, but “in the meantime, we still have good availability for all other oral care products in our range”.
What is striking in the ongoing disputes is that it is often not the case that retailers take references from the shelves, but that it is the manufacturers who themselves stop deliveries when retailers refuse price increases – or threaten to do so, as recently CEO Jan Boone of Lotus Bakeries did.
