Finding your favorite brand of cereals or tea in German supermarkets is no longer easy: faced with price increases imposed by multinational food companies, some distributors prefer to leave the shelves empty.
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“Dear customers, we are sorry to inform you that you will not find our supplier’s products”. It is increasingly common to come across this type of posters while shopping in Germany.
In question: the refusal of certain brands to pay more for certain products from large agri-food groups, sometimes requiring up to a third of an increase.
Supermarkets pose as defenders of purchasing power, multinationals argue for soaring manufacturing costs, especially energy.
The showdown between the food giant Mars and the REWE and Edeka supermarkets, the two largest German chains, is emblematic.
The two brands have given up 300 products from the American group, manufacturer of famous chocolate bars, Twix confectionery or M&M’s but also Ebly cereals, Whiskas or Royal Canin pet food.
AFP
“Many international brands are trying to take advantage of inflation to charge excessive prices in order to increase their profits,” an Edeka spokesperson told AFP, saying that the Mars request is “not justified. “.
Mars, in a statement to AFP, invokes the “volatile context, under inflationary pressure”.
“The withdrawal of articles is not new, it happens every year, but this time it goes a little less unnoticed, because Edeka and REWE are affected at the same time,” Thomas Roeb told AFP. researcher in economics at the University of Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (west).
On the shelves of Berlin’s Edeka stores, packages of animal food, a sector dominated by Mars, are scarce.
In a store of its rival, the supply of the rice department has been halved, for the same reasons.
If the absence of the American group is spectacular, it is far from being the only one.
In some stores, the products of coffee and tea specialist Jacobs Douwe Egberts have disappeared. Danone products have been taken off the shelves at Aldi and Lidl.
REWE no longer receives Kellogg’s cereals, because the company refused a 30% increase requested by the American group, according to the German press.
A legal battle has even erupted between beverage giant Coca-Cola and Edeka, which has asked German courts to force deliveries.
In vain: at the end of September, the Hamburg regional court ruled in favor of Coca-Cola, whose products are gradually leaving the shelves of the German group. A call is expected.
“Food, beverages or even hygiene products are missing,” confirms Leana Kring, 24, crossed in front of a supermarket near Karl Marx Allee, an emblematic alley in Berlin.
These withdrawals come in an already tense context in Germany: inflation reached historic highs, with a rise of 10% in September, due to the explosion in energy costs.
Beyond the displayed defense of the consumer, this crisis is an opportunity for supermarkets to promote their own private label products.
The margins that supermarkets earn on these cheaper products are much higher.
“Astronomical prices from Mars? So, buy Netto”, recently put forward, in an Instagram post, the low-cost brand Netto Market Discount, a subsidiary of Edeka.
In the REWE supermarket at Friedrichstrasse station, in the heart of Berlin, we can already see that “Ja” cereals, the group’s brand, have replaced the famous Kellogg’s.
Private label products are more and more popular with Germans, who are looking all over the place to save money.
“It’s cheaper, and it tastes the same,” Mirjam Branz, 30, from Berlin, told AFP after shopping.
The share of these brands in the turnover of the sector thus climbed by 1.2 points over one year in the first quarter of 2022, according to the GFK institute.