“Less than ten” references at Coopérative U, none at Carrefour and Intermarché… The decree requiring supermarkets to better indicate products affected by “reduction” practices comes into force on Monday, but few posters are expected on the shelves, according to professionals.
From Monday, supermarkets of more than 400 m2 will have to indicate with a poster the products, food or not, which have seen “their quantity decrease but not their price”, as the Minister for Commerce explained to the daily Ouest France. Olivia Grégoire mid-April.
The poster must indicate: “For this product, the quantity sold has increased from X to Y and its price per kilo, gram or liter has increased by X% or €X”, she elaborated.
Reduction, a legal practice, makes price increases less noticeable to consumers.
The display of the price per litre or kilo, which highlights a price increase, is however already obligatory and specialists also point out that quantity reductions are often accompanied by changes in revenue.
Recently, the Foodwatch association, which raised the alarm on this subject, had singled out the famous Kiri processed cheese, which had lost 2 grams in 2022. But the manufacturer, Bel, assured that it was not a question of masking inflation but of a change in recipe, with in particular a product made in France based on French milk.
As for supermarkets, they believe that it should be up to agro-industrial manufacturers to take charge of this display.
At Coopérative U, the 4th largest player in the sector behind E.Leclerc, Carrefour and Les Mousquetaires/Intermarché, “less than ten” references will be affected, out of the thousands or even tens of thousands that a large surface area sells, a spokesperson told AFP. “When we respect the rules and standards set out by the system, only these products fall into this category.”
Carrefour indicates for its part that it has “put in place a procedure which aims to identify” the potentially affected products in advance. There will therefore be “no cases of ‘shrinkflation’ in stores on July 1”, assures the distributor, who believes that the system “makes suppliers responsible” and specifies that it will respect the decree if a product was subsequently affected.
At Les Mousquetaires/Intermarché, there “will be no affected products on July 1, therefore no posters”, according to the group’s communication. E.Leclerc did not respond to AFP on Friday afternoon.
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